From Studying PHilosophy at Palomar College with Gene Sager I began to find a way to want to stay alive in the early 1970s

 Life is not easy for any of us. However, I was completely psychologically unprepared for adulthood (like many of you were not prepared either).

So, my return from a path to death began when I took my first Philosophy Course at age 23 at Palomar College then around 1971. I had already worked as a computer operator and computer programmer and as an electrician but because of a bad breakup with a girl I wanted to marry I wasn't happy being alive anymore. In fact, something that wouldn't have made any sense to me then was that I realize now I was really in love with at least 3 women at the time. But, that wouldn't have made sense to someone raised very religious and watching Disney movies at the time.

So, I was looking for a way to choose to stay alive then because I didn't see a path forward for me.

At 18 years old in Glendale College I wouldn't stand up in class and say what I thought usually unless I was directly asked to do so by a professor at the college or University I was attending. 

But, by 23 I didn't care what people thought anymore because I was barely hanging on to wanting to be alive even for one more day then.

So, College PHilosophy courses were the first thing where I could finally start to make some sense of what was actually happening to me at all.

So, I took all the philosophy classes available at that college and then also took "The Psychology of Personal Growth and Development". This started to set me on a path where I would choose to be alive the rest of my life. I stopped being so narcissistic because all the girls loved me and started to care about other people than myself. So, living for others rather than just myself was how I cured myself pretty much of male youthful Narcissism which kills many young men in various ways which I observed in my late teens and early twenties where young men were taking fatal risks all the time because on one level they didn't want to be alive anymore. But, if they had started living their lives for others and not only for themselves they might all still be alive today.

However, I was able to make this quantum Jump to wanting to be alive by starting to take philosophy Classes at 23. Philosophy Classes led to Psychology Classes which led to Social Science and Cultural Anthropology Classes.

Then I found that I was a natural Shaman and this changed my life a lot too. Because being both alive and dead at the same time was always my experience since all the seizures from age 10 to 15 years of age.

So, when I found out that the definition (at least then) of a Shaman in my Textbook in college was that:

"A Shaman is someone who has psychologically died but whose body still lives."

I went: "Wow! That's me exactly because like the ongoing definition said a Shaman can sometimes heal people because he lives in both the the world of the dead and the world of the living at the same time.

As a natural Shaman this made complete sense to me and it helped give me purpose in staying alive to help and heal all the people in my life from then forward.

By God's Grace