CHOP WOOD, CARRY WATER

The Ebb and Flow of Enlightenment

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If it’s all right with you, I’d like to share some thoughts about where I’ve been for the fast fifty-two years.

My life, my awareness of life and ability to function as an adult, began in the barracks of Fort Sill, back in 1970.

Drafted during the latter years of the Vietnam War, I was fortunate enough to avoid going to battle because I had a civilian skill as a printing press operator. I didn’t even have to go to Advanced Infantry Training.

After Basic, I was sent to my first permanent duty station as an 83F20 in Oklahoma. I was part of the Headquarters’ Company and worked in an old building that still held Geronimo’s prison cell. I was treated well enough. Didn’t care much for the desert heat; but on weekends, my friends and I spent most Saturday nights atop Mount Scott, listening to a battery powered turntable, Santana, and the Rolling Stones and looking at the stars. Most of my friends were from California and had been given the choice of going into the Army or jail. We had lots of fun.

Barracks’ life, while often made miserable by the blasting sounds of the Jackson Five and drunken or stoned speed freaks, provided an opportunity to meet people from all walks of life (except, of course, for those politically connected or rich). My life changed forever when a couple young men played me an LP of Dr. Maxwell Maltz describing his theory of PSYCHO-CYBERNETICS. That record (and later, the book) started me on a life-journey.

Dr. Maltz, by the way, coined the term Cybernetics.

Once I was let out of the Army, I returned to college and found the Thomas Harris book I’M OK, YOU’RE OK. That, and a class called Mental Hygeine, opened my mind to transactional analysis and why people are unable to communicate with one another.

After college, Shunryu Suzuki’s classic book ZEN MIND, BEGINNER’S mind brought everything together for me.

I figured I had it made in the shade.

Decades of meditation, a year as a Rosicrucian, studies of esoterica, Buddhism, and quantum physics gave me a sort of confidence and self-assurance that I never dreamed possible.

In the past six months, all that has collapsed and fallen apart. The Delta waves that I used to access in my mind so easily were no longer accessible.

With the aid of Hemi-Sync guided meditation CD’s (Dr. Scott Taylor’s INTO THE LIGHT series being my favorites), I am sometimes able to shake the disharmony that my mind has fallen into and I am always able to put myself to sleep by listening to Brian Eno’s MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS. But something is missing.

Can you feel it?

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