What I Learned

My path through life took me through being a young adult during the late 1960s. In 1969 I was 21. Since I was an idealist like many young people at that time I aspired to go to India and Nepal. But, luckily for me, this didn't happen until 1985 when I was 37 and so I went with my wife and 3 children then ages 11,12 and 14. We spent two months in India, two months in Nepal and about 2 weeks twice in Thailand once in December 1985 and once in April 1986. Because this had been a dream for so long to visit where I had lived in past lives, I was able to experience all these things in a very different context than many other westerners(people more from Europe or of European cultural heritage like America, Australia, Canada or North and South America etc.).

Though I was always gifted intuitively this like all forms of intelligence and awareness can be very tricky to navigate. I think this could be likened to the difference between an average person born walking down the street and being born hard wired into an automobile or airplane or even spaceship. Since none of us are born with instruction manuals(and even if we were we couldn't initially read them), trying to survive everything is a bit much in the extreme.

So, the joke that was played upon me by life was to be born very intuitively gifted in a very real way (not in a contrived or fake way) so that people knowing me often were scared or frightened by what I would know before it happened very often when I was a child. So I learned not to talk about what I saw coming unless lives were at stake. And even then I learned to whenever possible just redirect people without telling people how I knew thing in order to save their lives or prevent a maiming that would have otherwise occurred.

So even though as a fully formed and functioning adult that had gotten used to all this it might have been a nice quality to have. However, for a child growing up it was sort of horrific walking down the street knowing for example when and how people were going to die and stuff like that. It was horrific. That is the best way I can put it.

So, even though I could save my own life thousands of times and did it sometimes made me feel guilty because I realized not everyone could do this like I could. I could look into people and see what their abilities were. That was a given but often these abilities were fallow and left unnoticed and untended. This always made me sad. Because abilities untended are just accidents waiting to happen. Bad people with abilities might use those untended abilities against that person. This made me sad.

So, since my parents were both lay ministers(ministers with other day jobs besides being ministers) and in charge of their mystical Christian Church in Los Angeles I had plenty of opportunity to study God and spirit( at least God as far as my parents church taught.

So when my parents church and I parted ways at my age 21 I was searching for answers as I had become a full time truth seeker. (I had dedicated my life to finding out the truth about everything I could). I had become increasingly frustrated with all the ignorance and hypocrisy I had encountered growing up. So this truth seeking led me to Universities, colleges and eventually around the world searching for truth in all its many forms both experiential and intellectual.

This search eventually led me to my 2nd wife which led me to non-dualism, which led me to Tibetan Lamas and Native American Medicine men and women. Strangely enough all these forms of truth were interrelated for me. The understanding I gained liberated me from dualistic ways of thinking which freed my intuitive abilities to function more like I have always imagined Jesus actually was.

The problem I found was that Christian fathers of the various Christian sects or groups had tended to want to be all powerful and controlling. In order to do this they had to make everyone not on top feel bad if they were intelligent or intuitive. By keeping everyone down with intellectual or intuitive abilities they were better able to manipulate Christian groups to do their bidding and to be more like Slaves.

Once I understood this of Christian fathers of the various Christian sects it freed me from any sort of unnatural bondage. This allowed me to be free to have a real relationship with Jesus without having my head shoved up my rear end so to speak by manipulations based upon control and having nothing at all to do with Jesus in actuality.

This was step one in my liberation from unnatural psychological and cultural bondage in regard to being a Christian.

The second step was accepting Non-dualism as superior to dualism. I realized slowly that dualism is mostly for little children or those who still think and feel that way. It is sort of like saying "If you go out in the street I'll spank you" so a child doesn't get run over by a car or truck when they are under about 6 years old.

However, as an adult it is sort of ridiculous for someone who drives cars, trucks, flies planes, operates boats and ships etc.

So, understanding that the whole concept of dualism is inherently childish and only really useful for children or childlike people was another step forward into self discipline and self responsibility on every level of consciousness and action in my life.

Non-dualism I found to make a lot more sense. It is entirely based upon logic but I could see that for children dualism initially makes more sense.

In a non-dualistic world, everything that happens could be seen like the weather.

Is rain, snow, wind, flood, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes good or bad?

The answer is it mostly depends upon who and what is affected and in what way. Any or all of these things might be good for some people and all of these things could be bad for some people. However, none of these things are ultimately good or bad for all beings everywhere. Since everything in life is like this then a dualistic perspective that says this is good and this is bad is completely childish. Because nothing in the end is ultimately good or bad for everyone at any time. And anyone who isn't a little child understands this.

A good example of this is a saying by the French philosopher Descartes who said, "There is nothing so bad that no good may come of it and nothing so good that no bad may come of it". This is so obvious to any intelligent adult that it completely skewers any religious notion of absolute right and wrong.

So, ultimately, right and wrong has to be taken down to an individual level say, of within a family or friendship structure to make any sense at all. So in this context it is the most useful while training children to function within a society or family. And only in this limited sense is the concept of dualism of any value at all. So, in the tribal (extended family) sense of where Christian values all began dualistic concepts make sense. However, in the larger context of the way things actually work in regard to billions of people they don't. And this is the true paradox of dualism and why politicians have such a two forked tongue when they try to talk to the general populace about such things. They are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Whatever they say won't be accurate in the end or perceived that way by people in general because of this dualistic way that people of the Christian faith perceive reality.

So, what we are basically dealing with is old tribal concepts crashing into the realities of dealing with billions of people. No matter what happens truth is bound to suffer in the harsh realities of 21st century realities.