What if everything we think is WRONG?

As a fiction writer (which is to say a professional liar) I find it challenging to assume that anything about my personal opinions and experiences will find currency in the internet community of wandering eyes. Most people who meet me comment on the SIZE of my personality. I’m loud and enthusiastic and innervating. But there’s another part of me. The small, self-important child that hides beneath the jungle gym, afraid no one will like the way he plays.

                

That voice is in the shadow of every dreamer, whispering, you’re not enough, you’ll never be. Success is a statistical impossibility, procured by the sheer volume of those who trudge the same upward path. You’ll be drowned in the pound of footsteps! You’ll wither like a rose beneath the weight of poured concrete!

                

How many of you hear its whisper? On the street, flying past the other dispossessed? Those artists and followers and dreamers who slave behind a desk or in a warehouse like so many children waiting for Santa to deliver purpose into their lives?

                

I know I do.

                

Some feel the purpose of life is connection, family, the sutures we attach to the scars of lover’s hearts. But most of us struggle to find meaning in the profligacy and materialism of Western Culture. Not that Eastern, or European culture is much advanced. Or any other continent, for that matter. Because it isn’t a cultural problem. It’s a human problem. The dream that security and beauty and the applause of total strangers will somehow elevate us to a stasis beyond pain.

                

This, like all ideas of lasting happiness grounded in the material, is just another cop-out. A trick. Poof, now you see it, now you don’t.

                

Have I ever told you about my Father? He was a poet and an alcoholic, with what the mythic Neil Young called a “Heart of Gold.” I didn’t grow up seeing much of him. Tipping the bottle and getting heavy-handed were acts he seemed powerless to avoid. He was a tragic, vengeful creature with a bottle in his hand, and often the morning would find him crumpled on a couch, solemn and weepy as my mother cooked breakfast, afraid to ask what he’d done the night before. But take the poison out of him, give him a shave and a few hours with the family he’d die trying to protect, and he shined like the sun.

                

But the alcoholic is just that. A lone star that burns its own fuel in the vacuum of space, giving light and life at a distance, yet devouring all who near its caustic surface. The alcoholic is alone. Islanded. Misunderstood by himself, most of all. And so it was with my Father. Michael. You should know his name. Michael. The man I love. The man that passed not only his artistic inclinations, but his torture, his isolation, in a genetic chronicle of loneliness.

                

He died when I was 10. November 15^th, 1995. But his death marked a new beginning in my life. The beginning of the end. My poor mother struggled to rein me in. I think she would have had better luck training a dog to play chess (and the dog would undoubtedly have to be Russian). Rebellion ran like a wildfire through my opportunities, my relationships, my standing with every authority figure in my life. But this all was necessary. The destruction of a life, the burning of all sacred vows, self-promises, and moral stances. I became a monster. And soon it was even worse.

                

I became my father.

                

But then came the day of cosmic intervention. A gift I never deserved.

                

And I type before you now, renewed, unblemished, perfectly imperfect.

                

It’s a long climb out of Hell. Trust me, I’ve lived there. But it is a climb that’s given me a vantage of the depraved most folks never see. Those that do are usually too wrapped up in the reality of mental illness and depression to observe any detail free from the bondage of emotion. To them, their state of mind is reality, a surface like the sun, from which there is no hope of escape.

                

But this erroneous conclusion, like the seeming impossibility of success, is only one of many transitory mental states, a constant shuffling of emotions that windmill through our skulls with all the lifespan of fruit flies. The mind is the most powerful weapon in our universe. Its potential for destruction is limitless. But so too is its potential to heal, to connect, to include. And if you, like me, ever find yourself dragging your knees through the sludge of lowered expectations, or impending doom, or that most notorious quagmire of regret … why not breathe?

                

Focus on the cycling of air, a mechanism that’s function lies submerged in the hypothalamus region of the brain, below the chaos of thoughts, dreams, wishes, fears, or regrets. The body breathes without thought. Blood pumps without thought. Wounds mend without thought. And while I know it’s impossible to exist without thinking, might we not give so much attention to the chatter of the frontal lobe?

                

This isn’t a good essay. It meanders, and jumps from place to place without any sequence. But what better construction for a rant dealing with the propagator of all human suffering? The mind! One might even say this format is a perfect match. The real question is: How does one stumble from the darkness of despair into the reality of unity?

                

And the only answer I have to offer you is: Pain.

                

When the pain of holding on to what I believe I’m supposed to be becomes less than the pain of letting go and slipping off into the mystery, a shift occurs. That shift is from the personal, to the impersonal. From divided, to inclusive. From afraid, to enthused. I can’t explain how it happens any better than I’ve done (which probably only bred more confusion). It just DOES. And when the weight of existence becomes a little lighter, when our state of mind can stay buoyant despite the heaviness of our thoughts, our true purpose becomes clearer.

                

My journey into the stillness began ten years ago. Through it, I fell in love with the passions that still drive me, I dropped self-images, my need to be cool, and moved closer to becoming myself. “Who exactly is that?” you ask.

                

I don’t know.

                

But I can tell you what I’m NOT. And that’s only come from deep attentiveness, from watching the pitfalls of my mind in action, from closing my eyes and breathing through the maelstrom of my thoughts, from evaluating my missteps and making right what and whom I’ve wronged. I’ve felt opinions slough off like sheets of boiled leather, the need to correct everyone I meet, or tell them what I think. And what a joy it is to relish in the new lassitude of movement free from unneeded weight. My journey as a writer, as a spiritualist (Geez, that sounds so pretentious), has been a process of subtraction.

                

Don’t know who you are, where you’re going, the purpose of this charade?

                

Well, start with what you aren’t.

                

I have; and despite my moments of doubt, despite my opinions, quirks, and emotional temperaments, I’ve been allowed to chase my dreams, blood-noses and all.

                Radio Silence.