Beyond “Heart”

I find it somewhat ironic that the original title of my philosophical treatise focused on the heart. As good as it is, the writings themselves were rather intellectual in nature – not avoiding emotion, but neglectful of what are considered to be matters of the “heart.”

Consider this ‘Book II.’ ‘Book I’ centered on my world view prior to a very remarkable journey. And it is time to speak again. One thing that happened in the interim was that for almost an entire year I turned away from my writings. I had one foray into some additional topics ready to write, but my professional life got in the way. When I first began writing this, I had no time to transcribe it to the web, and that was a while ago.

By now you know me pretty well. If you’ve read the balance of “Heart,” you probably have a fair idea of what I was trying to say at that time. In addition, you may even see where I was spiritually and emotionally at the time I wrote it. If you didn’t, that’s okay, because I’m going to tell you here anyway.

I knew at the time that I was in search of something spiritual to consciously bring into my life, but it had to make sense to the things I already knew. It was and still is a difficult journey, but it was beautiful, at least to me.

Some of you might be tempted to say, “That was no spiritual journey. You abandoned everything of spiritual value as ‘useless.’ What in ‘Heart’ shows anything spiritual?” The answer is that I had to abandon everything from my religious training before I could even begin. The deep chasm between me and my parents would not allow me to take a road that they were already on. I needed to find my own path. I found a beginning with Zen and AVM, or ‘Animal Virtual Model.’ (By the way, for those of you interested in my choice of an acronym, ‘AVM’ balances ‘ZEN’ by being the total opposite letters of our alphabet.) I found Zen and AVM to be opposite poles, bound together very tidily by science – and the scientific method. Very tidy indeed. Maybe too tidy.

At the time “Heart” was written, I was in a dark mood to some degree. I spent a great deal of time on the road, and my day job was challenging. I had just finished the initial cut of the LVR manuscript, but knew that getting it published would be a challenge – one I wasn’t prepared to face. In addition, people around me began to die. This happens, of course. Relatives get old, and I had quite a few old ones. But when you turn to find an expected response, and it’s not there, the lack induces some trauma. I was traumatized at that point.

I was being brutally honest in my rejection of Christianity, but at the same time, it was becoming increasingly clear that spirituality was not only beneficial, it was essential to living a full and complete life. With Heart I attempted to create the roots of my own spirituality, and find a way to connect it to the balance of my life. I think I did a pretty good job, but as I was to discover, much of my spiritual side was already in existence, just waiting for me to discover it.

I will say this: In ‘Heart’ I spoke of a beautiful garden, with a house in its center that was impossible to get into, and was ultimately empty. Well, I told you my manifesto was wrong. Since I wrote Heart I have spent time in ‘the house,’ and from my perspective it is most certainly not empty. The lesson stands in the early chapters, and prepares you for the later stages, but it isn’t the truth. ‘Truth’ really isn’t the point anyway – it is a natural unfolding or blooming. How can we classify a rose as either truth or fiction? What shade of gray is ‘red?’

Nor do I want to say that my spirituality is complete. It is a path that is still is unfolding. I have no need to complete this journey, and I have no requirement to have a complete spirituality. My spirituality is the path itself. The whole thing is a gradual ascension, and circling. Discovery, deepening, aging, and rediscovery. I approach a place where the mundane experiences of life are taking on profound character. And I welcome the feeling.

There were other things happening in my life at that time. And some of those have come to fruition. These things are now the basis for my re-inspection of ‘Heart.’ And it is what I want to describe now.

My wife has had recurring back, neck, and foot problems over the years. Pain, and increasing limits to use, has, for the last two decades, had her moving from therapy to therapy, trying to find one that worked for her. Her search finally led her to Myofascial Release Therapy (MRT), created by John Barnes, PT. In simple terms, this therapy works on the fascial system of the body, and utilizes a holistic and self-guided approach to managing and resolving fascial restrictions. It involves a strong emphasis on mind-body-spirit connection. You can read Barnes’ interesting book, but I’m not going to rewrite it here for you. What I want to describe is my personal journey, as it became increasingly involved with MRT.

The other point of reference I want to describe is my physical health. Though I was pretty healthy for a man approaching fifty, I became increasingly aware of a problem I have been dealing with all my life, but finding it increasingly difficult to make it fit with my lifestyle and commitments as a parent and husband. As my daughter was approaching 10, we found ourselves increasingly at odds, and I as a father was unable to resolve the confrontations we were having. I was driving wedges in between me and the rest of my family. I was unable to maintain healthy relationships with most of my family and friends. The lie that “I was maintaining” was getting harder for me to support, and eventually it fell away.

Ultimately this was to be a journey to healing. I have explored, but the purpose of this exploration was to find the whole me. I wished to piece together the fragments of my psyche that are damaged, disconnected, or missing. I wanted to be comfortable with my destiny. That was my drive, and it remains so to this day, though I may have spoken of it differently.

Let’s give science a try

Science’s answer to my problem seems to be to improve my chemistry directly.

The first step away from “Heart” occurred when my wife recommended a book on ADD. I have always felt that my mind was a little different from others, and the things I read in the book convinced me that I should be tested for ADD, and in 2001, I did just that.

The testing, at the Amen Clinic in Fairfield, CA., included a detailed medical history, and some specific tests to identify areas of activity (or inactivity) in the brain. I won’t describe the test in any detail, but it involved the injection of chemical tracers, and imaging that found where the tracers ended up. The diagnosis was an almost classic ADD – type 2 pattern.

What were the implications of this diagnosis? It meant, for one thing, that I was a “quiet hyperactive” in my youth – one of those day-dreamer types that never was able to participate in classroom discussions – whose mind was always at play, and never able to concentrate. And that describes me in those years quite well. I was always getting notes from my teacher, telling my parents that I had loads of capability, but I wasn’t paying attention, and needed to focus. No one at the time really understood that I was physically incapable of concentrating. The ability to focus was completely beyond my control. The normal attention span of a typical 10 year old is something that I have never actually been able to achieve. But I was also a “hyperfocus” type, where if for some reason some topic “clicked” in, I would spend enormous amounts of time and attention on it, to the exclusion of all else. It’s a weird combination. It ultimately creates someone who can indeed write an entire book, but you can bet that all other tasks this person needs to do will be dropped once the urge to produce the book is in place. That is the kind of life I have been leading of late.

The trauma I have stored in my own body as a result of dealing with ADD, and thinking it was my own “fault” is immense. I’m even now just scratching the surface. I can look back and see how I mismanaged friendships, hid things from my parents. I faced extreme consequences for my inattention, and suffered from low self-esteem. But let’s jump to the present: My marriage was in trouble, my wife was going down paths searching for answers to her own traumas (which were if anything more significant than my own), my daughter didn’t like me all that much, and I was writing a book, holding down a fulltime job, and doing nothing about these problems. The wake-up call came finally that something had to change.

It turns out that the ADD brain looks and behaves remarkably differently from what is considered normal. When you look at the activity levels of the various parts of the brain at rest and under stress, you can see the differences quite easily. One of the most pronounced differences is some large areas in both the left and right pre-frontal lobes that get far less blood than normally. These areas are known to play an important role in decision-making. Doctors can prescribe medication that will raise the activity levels in these areas.

So understanding that I needed to make changes was the first step. The second step, based on my diagnosis of ADD, was determining what to do next. I chose medication initially. The reason I did was I had been in analysis for years, and nothing had really come of it. I became convinced that I was in a non-optimal mental state, and the medication might help me correct the deviation. So I tried it for a couple of years, and it seemed to work. My mind did seem to settle down – a new experience for me – and I was able to concentrate on multiple tasks. My job performance improved, and my relationships were better.

There were side-effects: muscle stiffness, a buzzing in my ears, occasional sleeplessness, and cramps in my groin. All in all, not too bad actually.

The real problem was that… it wasn’t me. There was still a “me” in there that suddenly had his mouth taped shut. My creativity went to zero. And all the traumas I had built up over the years were still there. Net result: My “lows” weren’t as bad, but I had no “highs” either. The pills led me to “Grayville.”

Wisdom

Luckily, my wife was about to bail me out yet again. Her search for a path to healing led her to an excellent MRT therapist near the City of Santa Cruz. And ultimately she recommended that I try her out. It was a life-changing experience.

I came to know her as my “Healing Wise Woman.” There was, I found, so much more to MRT than someone putting their hands on you. I found that the key to solving my problems lay in bringing my own resources to bear on the issues. In other words: “Happiness comes from within.”

The first thing that struck on meeting the therapist was her size. At 6’1” and 220 lbs, I’m a big guy, and she was quite small – a more than a full foot shorter than I. How can someone this size work on me, I thought. I could tell though that she had something special. She believed in herself and in the power to heal. She had a confidence that could not be denied, and I was comfortable in her presence. She lived and worked in a lovely multi-story, wooden castle, back in the deep redwood forests in the mountains behind the coastal city of Soquel. The narrow, old pavement outside was cluttered with gracefully rusting derelicts of VW buses, fast-growing weeds, and happy children. The redwoods were like a protective cathedral. I loved arriving, and barely tolerated leaving.

It turned out, that the “Therapist” in this case is more of a “Facilitator.” I was to perform most of the work myself. Needless to say, in my present state of mind, nothing obvious happened during the first few sessions. I began to feel like I had found yet another dead end.

However, some things were happening. The therapist worked more on building a bond of trust. As I grew to find some peace in her presence, my reluctance to share my feelings melted away. She pushed me to discard the medication, which I did to a large degree. And as time went on, I felt more like myself. I used the medication more on an “As needed” basis rather than continuously as prescribed. As I began to trust her more, allowing my emotional side to be exposed, changes were inevitable.

After a few sessions in her peaceful cabin in the redwoods, my imagination and emotions ran began to pour out. So we came to my forth or fifth session. It was to be my final session with her, since I was being relocated by my company to San Diego.

Seeing the Monk

The sessions took place on a single floor of the therapist’s house that was devoted to her business. The house was unusual, in that it was in essence a tower on the side of a steep hill, surrounded by towering coast redwoods. The feeling one got was of being in an aerie, floating above the main tree level, but in the midst of these dark red poles. Sounds of birds and even running water from a creek below, filtered into the room, but were moderated by gentle new-age music from the sound system. It was a peaceful retreat, and a place that I got used to very quickly.

In my final session with her, I was in a semi-hypnotic state, where I found myself floating down a river among lofty mountains. There was a sense of peace, but I had a troubling vision even so. The therapist noted my concern.

“Something is bothering you…”

I explained my vision. I told her I thought there was a dragon around one of the blind turns of the river, and I was afraid of what it might do.

“Dragons,” she said, “Mean change, but it may be good change. Why don’t you go around the corner and see what kind of dragon it is?”

“Okay,” I said, and I allowed myself to go around the corner. I saw no dragon, but as I passed a rocky outcrop, I saw a large lizard sunning himself. I told the therapist what I saw.

“Do you want to talk to the lizard – find out what he wants?”

I said I did, and I asked the lizard some things, but all he did was talk in gibberish and laugh at me. I had met this lizard before, and my expectations were low. Still, his discounting attitude made me mad. Finally I asked him if he would help me. The lizard laughed and said, “You can’t afford my fee.”

I got mad, and attempted to throttle the lizard with my hands. There ensued a struggle, and I physically had my hands in the air, simulating the event. The lizard said “I don’t like you,” and I said aloud, “I don’t like you either.”

The therapist let the struggle continue until I finally realized the futility of the effort, and put my hands down. Then she stepped in.

“The mind can imagine all sorts of forms. Why don’t you try and imagine a form that will answer your questions.”

It seemed like a good idea. So I relaxed, and did precisely that. What appeared before me then was a dark robed figure, with his head turned away from me. I described the scene to the therapist. As I did so, I felt pressure and some pain in my chest. I told her about that also.

“Try to see his face,” she said. “Can you see his eyes?”

The figure turned toward me, and I saw his eyes. The tightness got worse.

“Okay,” I rasped. I can see his eyes.”

“Good. Now – ask him your question.”

I asked the figure, “What is my name?”

The figure responded, and I actually heard his words. It was as if there was someone else speaking, but there was a sound. It was no dream. He said:

You who have walked through the desert – who have faced the anvil of the sun – how can you not know your name?

Then he gave me a name.

The pain in my chest exploded, and I cried out. Weeping openly, I told the therapist what had happened. “I didn’t know he was there,” I said.

The voice in my head continued:

I have always been here.

Since that time, I have seen “The Monk” a few more times either during therapy sessions or on my own. At other times, he has spoken to me. The lizard is also there. I can see these entities as facets of my own personality, or as external spirits who are drawn to me. Either way, the path I choose at any given time, can bring me closer to the Monk or to the Lizard. It’s the framework in which I view good and bad.

San Diego

Lovely as San Diego is, my first year here was a nightmare. Not only was I removed from my “Healing Wise Woman” in Soquel, and left without a trusted therapist, but I found myself under the purview of a vicious manager, who managed using lies and subterfuge. How was I supposed to ask for time for myself, in amongst a group who were all worried about their jobs, and worked day and night to prove they were “worthy” of continued employment. To make matters worse, the funds my company committed to move me, were contingent on my completing one year of service after the move. Otherwise they could ask for it all back. We had purchased a very nice house that committed us to significant mortgage, and I was very worried about keeping my job. My manager knew all that, and used it enhance my fears. As a result, I had no time for myself. I lapsed back into my old ways, and very shortly managed to make a couple of rather expensive mistakes. I almost got fired, and my reputation was all but shot.

“Get thee to a therapist!” The call was finally answered. I am slow to respond, but I do usually end up doing the right thing. My wife had been going to a group in La Jolla, and recommended them to me. The job was complicated by my need to find a way for insurance to pay for it. How could I justify physical therapy for ADD, which was the one thing I could say I was dealing with? I needed to find a Psychiatrist who was forward thinking enough to see there might be a connection. Luckily, I found one.

Meanwhile, my wife had gone to Sedona for a week of training on MRT, in order to take her understanding of treatment to a level where she could work on herself. Her experiences convinced me that I should take this step as well, and I committed to going the following year. I maintained semiweekly visits to La Jolla in the mean time, and eventually I grew to trust a whole group of therapists to the same level of the one I had in Soquel. Progress began again.

And what is “Progress” as I have defined it? Progress is an increase in the ability to remove traumatic response to life situations where they are not appropriate. If my daughter gets mad and throws something, my response should not be triggered by a traumatic event that happened during my own childhood. It should be a considered and reflective response, appropriate to the situation at hand. Manipulation based on guilt, an act likely triggered by guilt heaped upon us earlier in our own lives, ends up perpetuating the behavior to the one being manipulated. Clear discussion of cause and effect are much better, but it’s hard to do that if your own life is a non-stop reaction to past traumas. So progress here would be moving from having someone else help you release traumas, to learning how to do it yourself, as well as how to respond to life’s events in a non-traumatic way.

One other thing: I need to be true to myself. I am a unique person. But I have been hamstrung by guilt, anger, and fear. I was dealing with past traumas, and it affected my self-view in a negative way. My primary goal is to change that – to recognize the unique things I have to offer society, and to feel good about myself. This is the path that led me to Sedona.

In the summer of 2003, my grandfather died – a man who was very important to me in a number of ways. A successful scientist and engineer, he taught me a great deal, and caused me some of my earliest traumatic memories. His death set the stage for what was to be one of the greatest experiences of my life.

Sedona

October of 2003 found me on my way to Sedona for the MRT training offered through John Barnes’ Institute. I was excited to see the place, but very nervous about interacting with a lot of people I have never met before. In a way, it reminded me of being invited to an Amway meeting. I was afraid of being singled out for a manipulative assault. I had faith that this was not to be the case, and it got me there. And I have to say, Sedona is an amazing place to drop in on.

I needn’t have worried anyway. The room where we all met for the first time was filled with people with the same concern that I had. I wasn’t alone, and that set the stage for what was to follow. It was like an interactive Yoga class. Relaxation and breathing was a focus of the early part of the first day. There was talking, and getting to know each other, what lead each of us there. There were people in pain, their therapists with them, independents like myself, couples looking to bond. It was a mixed group. We settled in, and moved on to some beginning hands-on techniques, and right away some of the more sensitive people in the class began to have “unwindings.” These manifested themselves as involuntary movement and vocalizations. By the end of the day, I was howling like a wolf, and got a reputation. By the end of the second day, I was very close to my spiritual center. It was very weird for me, a self-styled atheist, acknowledging my spiritual side. I had previously come to the conclusion, as anyone who has read ‘Heart’ would know, that humans have a spiritual side, and it was healthy for them to embrace it. But experiencing it in realtime, was still new to me. What we had here, on a grand scale, were people “Speaking in tongues” and doing backflips. With my own hands, I was making people go through fantastic unwindings, and in turn, people were making me do things as well. There was no way I could discount what was happening as fake, because I would have to discount myself. Whatever it was, it was real. Real for me.

Cowpies on the day that something very beautiful and unusual happened.

The highlight of the class was a field trip to the rocks of Sedona. We carpooled to a location some miles up a winding dirt road. From there, we hiked a mile or so out into a natural amphitheater of red cliffs, with a base of gently-stepping tock tables. Called “Cowpies” on the map, one of these tables was large enough to accommodate the entire class. There we meditated individually for about one half-hour, then recongregated for some group activities.

The main activity was what was called a “Group Unwinding.” The class divided up into groups of five people, and four of the group stood in a tight circle supporting the fifth in the center of the circle. The one in the center could do anything they wanted to do. This is a person who hypothetically is now guided by the whole self, not just following intellectual paths with the analytical brain. The person could do backflips, try to fly, or do all kinds of things, guided by their own holistic wisdom. There was a little worry, in that no one knew quite what was going to happen, but by this time, we all knew each other well enough to trust everyone else.

I broke out with four women, and so thinking we would all be tired toward the end, I recommended that I go first. I stood with my back toward the late afternoon sun, with my eyes closed and just relaxed. My group all had their hands supporting my torso, and I had no fear of falling. The sun felt warm on my back, and suddenly a voice came into my head.

Turn to face me.

“I need to turn around,” I whispered to my group, and they helped me turn.

I felt the sun full in my face. For a moment I was calm. Then I felt a huge cry coming up from the depths of my spirit. When it came out, it echoed through the whole valley.

“Grandfather! I am here!”

I collapsed to the ground on hands and knees, and wept. “He was the Dragonfly,” I said. Clearly I was mourning the recent loss of my grandfather. Eventually, I lay fully prone on the warm rock. The women ended my session by putting small, warm rocks on my back and let me come back to myself over the couple of minutes I had. Then we went on to the next person in the group.

As a member of the support team, for the remaining four of the group, I saw sensuousness, anger, and sadness. Each unwinding was moving and unique in its own way.

This trip was a special turning point for me in a number of ways. But the drive back from the field trip was the clincher: I was driving, with three other passengers in my car. Ours was the last vehicle, except for the instructors, who took up the rear. As the afternoon progressed to evening, we wound down the hill. I passed a switchback, and followed a ditch that, on the other side, turned to a steep, upward slope, leading, 100 feet above, to the road again. As we drove this stretch, the woman beside me in the passenger side said, “Oh look, a rock slide.” Sure enough, an active dribble of fist-sized rock was coming down by the car. I slowed. Suddenly a lot more rock came down. In the middle of it, was a car. It was the instructor’s car. It skidded down to stop, upright but nose down, into the embankment adjacent to the road.

This was no experiment. No test. The car was totaled, crushed, crumpled, and resting dustily in the ditch.

At once, the boy scout in me came out. I didn’t know who it was, at the time, but we were going to help. We stopped, and all got out. The driver of the other car pushed his door and jumped out, spun around a couple of times and sat down. He didn’t get up.

The head instructor, a slim but powerful young woman, with long red hair, climbed slowly out of the back. She seemed to be okay. The front seat passenger did not move. I had one of my group call 911 for help. We found a blanket, and covered the driver. He probably had a minor concussion. The lead instructor assessed the condition of the one remaining in the car. That person had no belt on, and had rolled two or three times as the car careened down the nearly vertical slope. Within 20 minutes we had an ambulance, a fire truck, and a highway patrolman on the scene. They quickly took charge, and it looked like everyone was going to be okay.

The three instructors all spent the evening at the local hospital. I went to my hotel and found one of my classmates that I liked particularly well and told her about what had happened. She said that when they had got to the main road that evening, the fire truck was already headed up the hill, and she had a bad feeling but didn’t know what to do. She and I went to the hospital and found the two women instructors ready to be discharged. The woman instructor who had rolled over during the fall had suffered only bruises – nothing a little time and unwindings couldn’t fix. The driver had been sent on to a nearby city hospital with better facilities for overnight observation. We took the instructors home, and they actually stayed up late unwinding the incident. I went back to the hotel and got a good night sleep.

The next day was the last day of the class. Only the head instructor showed up, with two new assistants. There was a very interesting moment when one of the men in the class asked a question.

“This has all been very interesting, but I have to say, all the moaning and writhing – I mean, I could tell something was going on here, but I just couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t get into it the way they were. Is there something wrong with what I am doing? What do I need to do that I am not doing?”

I asked if I could answer, and the instructor gave me the okay.

“A year ago I was in the same boat that you are right now. And it’s okay. But I think there are three things you need to succeed here. The first is that you need to continue to do the work. The second is that you need someone to work with you that you can trust. The third is to have faith that eventually you will get through. And you will get through.” I had this huge lump in my throat as I spoke. The words were totally heart-felt - something I have never done before. Oddly, the instructor felt she needed to qualify my answer herself, but I got a lot of nodding heads from my response. I really felt like I had learned something. All in all, it was a good morning. I drove home to San Diego that afternoon.

Some things have changed since then. I came back determined to get my first novel published, and did so through AuthorHouse. I finished the second one, which is headed out for publication, and I am working on the third. Some new poetry got written, and I am being more of a father and husband than ever before. I’m taking better care of myself, which includes trips to La Jolla for physical therapy every other week. We’ve had our ups and downs as a family, but I anticipate we will be together for a long time.

Meanwhile the journey continues…

Personal Mythology (Faith as Glue)

How good is your glue?

Remember when mom tucked you into bed at night, kissed you, said she loved you, and said she would see you in the morning? And you believed her? That is a piece of your mythos – your personal mythology. You have seen mornings and nights, and you’ve seen how she treats you. Do you have any doubts that she was wrong to say what she said. What is love? You have your observations, but they alone cannot prove that morning will come, and that she will be there to fix your oatmeal. That you must take on faith.

Faith fills a lot of holes, most of which we never even think about. It is so deeply engrained within us that we don’t even see it.

Ask people what their personal mythology is, and they won’t have a clue.

I think Hofstadter was on to something when he discussed logic in GEB. At some point in his synthetic logical analysis, you have to make a leap from the independent statements and say, “If the preceding statements are true, then this also must be true.” That is the hidden faith in logic.

Easy for an atheist to say “There are no true myths. There are only facts. We can break the universe down into a series of facts. And one day we will.” But can you see the mythos here?

(We have the correct set of facts, and we know how to make use of them.)

Even if they are right about the universe, the shear number of facts exceeds our ability to comprehend them. There will always be a deplorable lack of known facts. How are we supposed to get from one fact to the next. Ultimately it takes a good glue to hold them together. It takes a healthy mythos.

“We know a lot,” you say?

Here’s one thing. We observe that some isotopes are radioactive, and they decay at a rate known as a ‘half-life.’ Starting with a specified amount ‘A,’ we know that sometime in the future that amount will have dropped to ‘A/2.’ The same time span later, the amount is now ‘A/4 ‘ and so on. So can you tell me which atom is going to decay next? Or why they decay at all?

Science is so wrapped up in what we know, that it forgets the volume of things that we don’t know will always exceed that. And labels such as ‘half-life’ mask the unknowns. We stop, thinking we understand. After all, it has a name, so we can talk about it. We must know all we need to know – right? What holds together your set of facts that almost, but never quite seem to touch when you look closely?

How good is your glue?

Science is self-described as a consistent but incomplete view of the universe. Religion is touted as complete, but it inconsistent. Religion requires that we accept some claims that cannot be proven, and which seem far-fetched in many cases: (Revelations, miracles, etc.) For the price of this foolishness, we get assurance that goodness will be eternally rewarded. Science cannot offer that, and it is a pretty big reward for so little a favor. Is it any wonder that religion is so popular? Especially (but not limited to) those with little scientific training.