Who the heck am I?

The sky of mind

If you’ve been reading my blog, more than likely you’ve come to realize that I’m an outlier. I don’t fit the ordinary categories, and that disturbs some people, but the truth is neither do you. 

What people believe overrides truth nearly every time. I haven’t always been so unorthodox, in fact, most of my life I was just like everyone else: screwed up but not aware there was any other way. So I want to tell you a little bit how I went from normal (and screwed up) to abnormal and at peace.

In 1964 I did a terrible thing: I went to Vietnam as a Marine and killed a lot of people. What I hadn’t bargained for was that it killed me—spiritually, emotionally, and mentally. For years following my two years perpetuating socially acceptable mayhem on my own human family, I suffered greatly and was eventually brought to my knees, so full of despair that on a morning 16 years later I made a decision to either commit suicide or get to the bottom of my unexplained dilemma. Obviously, I made the choice of getting to the bottom of my suffering and this took me into strange lands.

I then went to live in a Zen monastery and subsequently experienced a profound awakening, within both the framework of Zen and Christianity. The result of that dual experience of non-duality opened up a doorway into a realm I didn’t know existed and allowed me to live with peace. I then made a pledge to spend the rest of my mortal life passing on the lessons I had learned. So now I share my hybrid and unorthodox strangeness with whoever has ears to hear and a receptive eye.

I have now honored this commitment by teaching, leading meditation groups, writing (this blog), and thus far six books, the latest of which is Impostor—Living in a world of Alternate Facts, which is available free of charge by clicking here. This is a part of my pledge: To give back what I’ve learned. There are many things I don’t know about and I steer clear of speaking and writing about such things. But I know a lot about transforming your mind, leaving behind a life of sorrow and discovering the wellspring of joy that lives within all people. I write about that, only. If I can pass on that, it’s enough because that can change your life and leave this world a better place.

A Bird in hand.

Here or There?

Permeate. Interpenetrate. Assimilation: all mean essentially the same thing—To infuse one thing completely into another thing, so the distinction between the two no longer exists. 

Mix the color red with the color blue and purple results. Now there is no more red or blue. Combine liquid water with extreme cold and ice results. Now there is the result of interpenetration. Mix spirit with matter, and what do you get? A sentient being with no more boundary lines between matter and spirit. Now mix two or more sentient beings, and what do you get? Chaos. 

Red is different from blue, and they don’t fight. Water and cold are different, and they don’t fight. Spirit and matter are different, and they do fight. Isn’t that odd? How can it be explained?  The problem is consciousness and perception. Red, blue, water, and cold are not conscious, but suddenly, there is fighting over differences when you add consciousness. And the reason is simple: Consciousness produces the capacity to perceive, and what a sentient being perceives are differences. 

Nobody can perceive a spirit, just what a spirit produces—sentient matter. There are both benefits and consequences of being human. We are a mixture of matter and spirit. We are sentient beings. We perceive only differences. We don’t perceive our true spiritual nature because it can’t be perceived through our ordinary senses. We would rather have what we imagine is a couple of birds in the bush instead of the one in our hands. The one in our hands is no longer either spirit or matter. Now it is simply One whole sentient being: the infusion of Spirit and non-spirit. We are the Middle Way.