Today, a new essay, "Drawing Near," under Essays in the website.  FK

Reading further in David Hawkins' book on enlightenment, "The Eye of the I," we find during the second part of the book - one of questions and answers - that he is indeed an enlightened one.  He himself states that only about one in 10 million people have reached such a state, so he is special indeed.  I want to smirk, but why not? How many regular people - people who are not self-proclaimed gurus with worshiping followers - have clearly stated that they are enlightened?  None, to my knowledge, and that's a pity, for we could use the help.  They are out there, but they tend to be silent.  If Hawkins' claim is correct, we should be thankful for the help, for surely he has set himself up for unwanted ridicule by "coming out,"
and lord knows most of us could use the help.

This enlightenment was stated in the beginning of the book, but it was written in such a curious, almost fantastical way that it was hard to determine exactly what was going on.  Was what he was stating real, or a fantasy possibility? He talks of himself (as if a distant person) suddenly being taken by the 'All That Is' from a successful career (Hawkins is an MD and PhD), which he found impossible to continue after the revelation.  He then relocated to a small house in the West to an area that, he stated, was conducive to spiritual contemplation.  After several years - about ten, if I remember correctly - he began to reconnect with the world.  The reality of his re-connection has become several books and apparently some symposiums where he answers questions. I would like to be there at one of the symposiums, for as far as I know, I have never met a fully enlightened person.  Of course, that is what he has to put up with - people come to the freak show for amusement or unwanted worship.  It is, as he says, karma's decision, which at this point in development is his own as well.

But again and again, I run up against his claim that all duality is illusion - that even the worst of suffering is not real, and that much of this suffering is even welcomed on a deep level by the sufferers as drama.  Having been close to real suffering, that seems cold - but it is in line with mystical thought.  Yes, on that higher plain, one is above time and space and differentiation, and as such above suffering.  It seems so inhuman, however, but it does remind me of an episode of mine from a much earlier life.


It is another episode I am not proud of, but cannot feel too guilty about as there was no malice of intent.  It happened in June when my friend Jim and I were about 18, newly released from high school or an early year of college, and because it was such a beautiful day and a Saturday, we did what we sometimes did back then - found some mescaline to take to groove on the righteousness of temporary freedom and summer weather.  I believe that we were on bicycles and had been cruising about an area at the edge of town that contained a large cemetery.  As the mescaline began to bring us to the peak, we felt desperate for water and went to a small variety shop across from the cemetery to get some soda.  We sensed it was a mistake as soon as we entered, for our expanding vision was too large for the cramped store - the colors of the candy wrappers waved and shouted, the alignment of the isles seemed foreign and somewhat menacing, and handling people such as the proprietor seemed an impossibility.  Grabbing some sodas at random, we began a quick lurch towards the counter to pay and get the hell out back into open sky, when a girl our age approached us from somewhere inside.  I had known her in early childhood from the neighborhood I had been born into, and from which we had 
moved when I was six.  I barely recognized her and wondered how she could still know me, but she did, and she came to us with a grim face.  She had, we could tell, bad news: "Bill G. has just been killed in Vietnam."


Bill G had grown up in the old neighborhood, which both of us had left at an early age, but his family was vaguely known to me.  He himself was several years older, and I could not even picture his face, and I doubt she could, either.  But she had this heavy, terrible news.  For a brief moment Jim and I were silent - and then burst into laughter, a laughter that soon got out of control.  The girl stood there stunned, and as the tears rolled down our faces, I believe we finally managed to put our money down and get out of the store - or simply put the sodas down and left.  It was hilarious and unbearable and frightening.  Outside, we finally calmed down but could not bring the words to why we laughed at someone else's tragedy.  But we knew, and somewhat later agreed upon the words.  


It was not that we were disrespecting the solemnity of the tragedy, for we knew even at that age how much people were suffering for it. Rather, it was the act of the girl- and 'act' is the word.  What made it so funny was that she did not know that she was acting, acting the part of the tragic sufferer, even though she hadn't known the guy any more than I had.  She was imagining the pain of the family and projecting herself into it for the drama.  Peaking on hallucinogens, one cannot dissimulate.  What is, is, and there is no way or place to hide it.  You and everyone else is an open book, fake drama and all.  We had to get away from her because we knew our reaction was socially wrong, and maybe morally so - but we could not hide from the comedy of the girl.  


As we age, we become more "secure" - that is, we belief in the bull about ourselves even more than when young.  I do not think I have the courage to face myself with such substances now.  I know too well how full of it I am, and really don't want to leave the fantasy of maturity that I have built for myself.  But it does bring home Hawkins' point: a lot of our suffering is made up and done because we like the drama.   


On the other hand, for the family of Bill G., I do not see anything fake about it.  As an adult, I have seen the suffering from terrible loss, and it is very, very real.  What Hawkins says of this is: it is still not real, none of it.  But he does have sympathy for those who suffer, just as one has sympathy for the small child who cries out of fear of the boogeyman or for his lost snuggle bear.  It is immature and silly, but not to the child.  I suppose, then, that is what we are, children.  "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do."  To be fully enlightened must be both wonderful and horribly frustrating. To be able to stare into the face of real suffering, even if one is loving and compassionate, and not be moved to despair, is a level from which I might be forever apart.  FK            

Of the books I have read lately, no other author has claimed to know the score more than David Hawkins in his book, "The Eye of the I." Thing is, nearly everything he says so far runs true as far as I know. His greatest contribution concerns the problem of duality, which has preoccupied me, but not him.  With me, I too have felt the knowledge that all is one in time and place and perfect, but always have to look at the misery of the world and say, "that doesn't help them all that much."  But for Hawkins, this is not a problem.  Our perceived reality is unreal and should be treated as such.  His certainty is so great that he tells us to go on no crusade, take no sides in the debates and struggles of humankind, for they are all in error.  Everything is perfect as it is, and once one sees it, one's loving behavior and emanations will do more good than any who carry signs or run petitions.  Frankly, after a lot of years watching such things, I do believe he is right - although, as an un-perfected human, I still must take sides. 

His analysis, from the point of view of the truly enlightened (and perhaps he is), is sometimes hilarious.  On God, the "All That Is," he says with obvious truth that God is not vengeful, angry or disappointed.  It is "All That Is," after all, and with that, there is nothing lacking (what is funny is his putting God where It belongs, as the master of All, and then, to show how obvious the error of a  jealous god is, presenting IT as a petty, immature tyrant).  He ("It" is too impersonal, but we know God is beyond male and female) does not need prayers, does not punish and does not create misery.  It is we who create the incomplete and the miserable, and we who project an angry or demanding god from our own inner turmoil.  

And so with this brief summary in mind, we turn to guilt.  I have stated that guilt is a decoy, a distraction from spiritual work, and Hawkins would agree with me - but he would also say that ANY enveloping thought patterns are a distraction.  He is more particular about guilt, though, and states flatly what I have recently come to believe - that guilt is our way of punishing ourselves so that god won't have to.  With guilt, we believe we get the purgatory out of the way.   But we don't.  There IS no purgatory or hell or any other torture chamber outside of our own imaginations.  God, recall,  is ALL; he is complete and serene and does not get angry, ever.  He does not need to punish, and in fact the idea of punishment simply cannot be acted upon from the ultimate reality, which is LOVE.  The real love. The love that has you love your child anyway, except way bigger.  

And so, appealing again to the obvious, he tells us that guilt is a waste.  If one wishes to change and not make that mistake again, simply change.  As I put in the last essay, the present is the only real time we have, and so it should be the only place for mental action. Guilt will not change the past, and we have no sin to work off. Simply change in the present, now, and we have corrected the error.  End of story.

And yet, not even Hawkins can write without implying some guilt. As he says, "nothing is lost on consciousness.  Nothing.  He (God) really does know every hair on your head."  While we are then reassured that God takes no prisoners, nor is involved in any war at all, for there is only one "All That Is," this makes me uneasy.  I've had a lot of bad - or let us say, unloving - thoughts.  Why are they all remembered?  For what purpose?  I have not finished the book and maybe I'll find out (at this point I would say that the nature of the universe IS that nothing is ever lost, for all is ONE) but I have an uncomfortable feeling.  In our human reality, records are kept not only for data - birth dates and SS numbers - but for rewards and punishments also.  This "never lost" business smacks to my immature mind of the harsh taskmaster of karma and sin.  Hawkins does answer this part of it - our karma is what our energy draws to itself, whether that be joy or misery.  Additionally, he also adds that most people secretly enjoy the drama, including the bad, in their lives.  

We will have to see what comes next and what to think of this.  But of one thing we can be certain - guilt is a spiritual drain.  It is best that we see the source of error, and go and sin no more.  Guilt does no one any favor, not ourselves, not others, and not God.  FK   

"Peace like a river..." from (St) Paul, I think, and the absolute perfection of today is just like that.  "If I could save time in a bottle," from Jim Croce, rock star, is another thought for today, this perfect day.  If I could save it, yes I would.  Nothing going on, no parties or fame or fortune, just a beautiful today - perhaps that is the reason for laid back L.A.  But we find from Joseph McConeagle in his book about remote viewing that a day can be lost - and more than that, an entire dimension.

In his further experiments with remote viewing, he learned "lucid dreaming," or the ability to become consciously active in dreams. When this happens, one is able to control the dream - fly, swim under the ocean, whatever the heart desires, but in a dream that is more like reality than normal imagination.  Having mastered that, he began doing remote viewing experiments from the dream.  In the protocol originally set up, an envelope would have a randomly selected target in a sealed envelope (originally, to counter claims of fraud) that would be opened after the remote viewing was done.  The same was done in lucid dreaming, the control, or person being out of the dreaming, given a signal by Joe from his dreaming state when he had achieved conscious will in his dream.  Joe was then to go to the site in the envelope, then wake up and describe the location, where the envelope would be opened for verification.  We learn from him later in the book that he found that he could do remote viewing from any conscious state well before the target was randomly selected, as "viewing" occupied a place - and I use that term loosely - that is beyond space and time, but that is another story.  In this one, the remote viewing worked well in the dream world.  But soon he found there was a problem.

In what to me is frightening, he would wake up and talk to the controller, who might open up the envelope - or not.  He might say, "Joe, wake up!"  The first time this happened, he found that he had not really woken up - that he had instead woke into another dream where he thought he was awake.  But with more time spent in lucid dreaming, he often could not determine for some time if he was awake or not.  In fact, he began to wake up and live his life, sometimes for 'hours,' (not our hours) before something would trigger the idea that he was still dreaming.  In time, this would make him wake up again, as he understood it, only to find hours later that he had STILL not woken up.  Thus he was beginning to dream a dream within a dream and so on, whose possibility for infinite regression was raised.  He stopped doing the experiments. Good call.

But imagine - there is a possibility that any number of us are caught in a dream regression that we do not realize.  The questions raised are endless - if I see you in that dream that I think is real, will you really exist?  If not, might I not really be the god of the world I am currently experiencing?  In lucid dreaming, one can become like superman - could one of us become like superman in this, which might well be a shared dream?  Is this a shared dream, then, one from which we will awaken after a believed death - or is it one which will continue as a believed but unreal "wake up" after our dreamed death?  

Yes, it is the stuff of a stoned conversation, but it is not based on a mere possibility.  This man was caught in a receding dream world, in a reality whose time ran by entirely different standards, as dream time does.  Could he not have lived out many lives before he actually woke up?  And what, after such an experience, would be the difference to him between real life and dream life?  We are told by some that we can rise above standard physics to do some remarkable things, and there is proof of it (such as remote viewing). Is this the tip of the "dream" ice berg?  Is life much more like a dream than we think?

It has always been my assumption that this life is a shallow snippet of total reality, false in its presentation not because it is unreal, but because it is incomplete.  Could it be so incomplete that it is nothing more than a shade of consciousness, only a mirror of a snippet of reality?  

It is immaterial to me, as I can not rise above our world's physics, at least for practical, non-consciousness matters.  But I also see the possibility of hell here - would not an infinite regression be akin to a sort of hell, a place without escape?  Within infinite time, the mistake would be figured out, but what an awful time in the mean time, for after a while we would feel the sense of being trapped. Sometimes, I must confess, reincarnation gives me that same feeling of entrapment.  But in the beauty of a day like today, I feel this cannot be a dream or a trap.  Rather, it is the semblance, the first glimmerings of a greater glory that lies within, or above, or however we wish to imagine it.  It is real, but only a little bit real - the beginnings or first semblance of total reality.  Or so I imagine.  FK                    


 

In writing the recent essay, "Fire and Ice," I spoke of guilt and regret and how it comes to negatively affect us in the living present.  Like physical pain, the correct service of guilt is to alter our behavior. Whether we take a spiritual view of it - that "right" is something inborn - or a sociological view - that "right" is a form of social control - looked at logically, it should simply keep us from repeating a behavior that gives us uncomfortable feedback.  And then we should move on.  As Jesus said, "Go, and sin no more."  That is, you've lived through the hard consequences, now leave it to the past and do not do it again.  But guilt will not leave us be.  Like a sore that will not heal, it stays at the ready to pound us in more contemplative moments, when we would be far better off expanding our understanding of existence.  Guilt, then, acts as a barrier to spiritual progress.

Last week I heard a man on the radio use the expression, "Indian Giver," and I reflexively gasped.  Isn't that a racist slur of some sort?  And undoubtedly, there will be those who are easily offended who will call it that, but in reality, the term uses the word used for Native Americans that has  been used without offense for hundreds of years, and then points to their rivals - the European -originated powers.  It is they who are the "Indian Givers" , they who "gave" the right to the Indians to have Indiana, then took it away; to have Oklahoma, and then took it away; to have the Black Hills and then took it away.   An Indian Giver is a liar who gives with one hand and steals with the other.  It is a slur on our American government, not the Indians.  But a certain part of our society would have it both ways.  When I heard the term on the radio, I was first afraid for the racist content, and then reminded of the failure of our government. They are contradictory fears and regrets, but doubly effective.  The word-controllers would have us feel bad about our government, as well as for the very personal choice of words that we make.  They would have us conform to a foreign ideology, one that makes our collective government a source of shame (in the overall sense) and our individual thoughts a slate in dire need of self-censorship.  

It is easy to see from the phase "Indian Giver" that one form of guilt is organic, stemming from a much broader sense of what is right - do not lie and steal back what you have given; while the other is a form of  guilt meant as a means of control by one ideological camp over others.  It is not organic, but a nearly blatant power move to control what one can think by controlling words themselves.  With this we have to ask ourselves - who gave them the right?  We have freedom of religion, to choose the exact nature of the moral code  we wish to pursue; but we are also to have freedom of thought and expression, and yet...

It is all about control, and as in any good religion, the ends, even if they are good, do not justify the means.  This is a power move that should be exposed, resisted, and rejected.  

But what of our internal guilt machine, the one that invades at times when we could instead be growing in contemplative knowledge? This, too, is a power play, not by a group in society but by a part of ourselves.  What is this part wishing to do?  If it were only used as a reminder when we are about to morally stray, it would be one thing; but that is not what we are bothered by.  Rather, it is the nag that will not shut up, one that is actually detrimental to our spiritual growth.  So why is this part of ourselves?

In the human arena these days, they say to 'follow the money.'  To look for the purpose of guilt, it is better to say ,"follow the power."  What, that is, is gained by this internal nagging?  Who gets the power?  To answer that is to see what loses power, and that is spirit.  While tied up with guilt or remorse, we do not grow spiritually. Who benefits? 

All I can see is that the "I" benefits - that is, the tangle of memories and emotions that make up the concept of the self.  The self does not like to be reminded that it is only temporary and ever-changing.  The self wishes to be seen as the center of the universe even though it is abundantly clear that it is not.  That, then, is the point - to tangle up free thought so that the obvious remains obscure. The obvious is that our "I," our self, is a paper thin wafer on a giant sea. This "I" will work its tail off, even to the point of killing the host, to retain the fallacy of central dominance of the greater, connected Self.  

It seems so apparent and yet it is hard to avoid, the tricks of the self.  As far as the politically correct crowd in our current society, I have identified it and promised myself that they would not change my freedom of expression, but I was wrong about its power.  I could not help but gasp when I heard the word, "Indian Giver," even though I know its true meaning.  And so it is with the battle of the self to usurp the throne of the greater Self.  Expose it all you want, but as long as it is "you," it will win.  Fight it and it is only the "I" fighting the "I," strengthening even as it weakens.  Instead, it is the plain truth found in quiet contemplation that wins without a fight, simply because it is so clearly right.   Once we get through the haze of words and manipulated emotions, nothing could be clearer.  FK       

Today, a new essay, "Fire and Ice," under "Essays" on the website.  FK

I have often written of synchronicity, as it is the tip of the iceberg of fate that demonstrably affects us all.  In what could be an essay, my son reminded me of a synchronicity series that I had forgotten, most likely because it started with some very negative stuff, although most synchronized events are forgotten anyway as they don't fit into our normal relational pattern of thought. 

My son began with the police.  In a complex story, it happened that a friend's ex-con step brother called the police on the friend for robbing him of video games and an x-box.  The friend says he didn't do it, but it really doesn't matter - most of the games and the x-box itself were the friend's property until the friend had a fight with his brother and left the apartment, whereby his stuff was assumed by the brother.  Yes, complicated and silly, which is what I told my worried son; the police will push it aside as an in-family spat and a nuisance because of the anonymity of the missing property, its low value, and especially because of the personal nature of the actions taken.  This is the kind of headache that only Judge Judy would welcome to boost her daytime ratings.  However, it did remind me of the one time that I made a nuisance visit to the police, something that I am not proud of, but something that had profound consequences for our future lives.

I am also not ashamed of it, either.  It involved a dog fight, and a distant neighbor who claimed that it was my beagles, not his Labrador, who were the aggressors, ridiculous on its face, but I am not here to try my case.  Rather, I had thought nothing of it and had driven off, all the dogs involved being off leashes in the woods, but this neighbor (his 21 year old son, actually) followed me to my house and began making threats - either pay a large sum for some vet bills (again, laughable on its face, but who knows?) or else!  He continued with his threats for a few weeks, my argument being that his dog had been the aggressor - and anyway, he was coming to my home making physical threats at my doorstep!  However right or wrong, I went to the police before violence started and had them give him a call.  The direct threats stopped, but a "for sale" sign appeared mysteriously by the mailbox a few days later.  

My son had just been born and this was an extremely anxious time for us.  About 8 months later, I noticed a derelict house for sale that happened to have a large acreage in an extremely rural area to the north - just what I like - and in spite of the new child and partly because of the hostility of the neighbor, I decided to go for it.  My wife, for some odd reason, agreed, and for the next 2 and a half years I spent a life of sweat and anxiety rebuilding a very flawed house and out-building.  After that time, my wife's company had her move, and the property had to be put up for sale.  The first real estate agent gave us a low price, one that would barely recoup the money put into it, and when I balked, said smugly, "That's all right.  They all come back to me sooner or later." Our next agent gave us a much higher starting price, in hope, and put out a sign at the bottom of the driveway, where the house itself was hidden by the trees.  A day later, a man and his wife drove up, having seen the sign.  I showed him the place and gave him honest answers to the problems.  He was a builder, however, and knew right off, anyway.  A week later, we got the much higher price that we had wanted, with a satisfied buyer.  Selling a house had never been easier.

Because of the profit made, we were able to buy our current house - one that is small but has a large acreage.  Within a few years, something rare happened, especially for those who live in the country.  Along our road, we became good friends with our neighbors, all who happened to be in our age range, and they cemented friendships among themselves.  It has been a surprising and unexpected bonus of our move, one that I had vehemently resisted at first.  

And so a bunch of negatives led us quickly in a direction we did not want or did not expect, and ended with increased wealth and friendship.  It was as if the darkness and struggle had to come before the path was found - and once it was found, things went slicker than grass through a goose.  And such it is that the I Ching says, "(influences) are in harmony, so that all living things bloom and prosper. - T'ai, or "Peace."  This is followed eventually by the negative oracle, "Standstill," which then runs through its cycle again before reaching the positive.  It is said that the worst of low cycles can be avoided by proper behavior - did I do right by contacting the police? But certainly, somehow we got in tune with the positive when it was time, for the path was paved, whether it was initially wanted or not.  Synchronicity pointed the way - as it is meant to do, both in good times and bad.  It happens in all our lives, and we all can see it if we look.  How this happens will forever be a point of discussion here.  FK    

This long weekend I went alone to our small cabin in the Upper Peninsula for well-needed, if not particularly wanted, introspection.  More on that later in an essay, but given the long ride there and back, and the days spent with no one to talk to but myself, many random ideas coalesced from bits and pieces that have built up like so many emails in the inbox.  One was the hippie idea of "free love" and the remarkable success in recent years of mainstreaming same-sex sexual relations.  

For those who were too young to remember or not even born, a large part of the hippie movement - something that has contributed hugely to today's changing social arena - was encapsulated in the bumper-sticker slogan of "free love."  This was not a new idea, and had been tried at times throughout the millennium in the Christian nations by radicals attempting to free themselves from the yoke of the Imperial Church - and always being viciously crushed for it.  In the pagan era of the Roman Empire, orgies were not the norm but they were not forbidden either, and they did occur here and there, often cushioned in spiritual beliefs.  But it is with the crushing of millennial movements in Christendom and the much later belief by Freud that much of our unhappiness was caused by repressed sexuality that I think the general view of the hippies was born.  Free love meant free sex, which meant no more repression and no more wars or psychological problems.


Obviously, open sex of every kind done in the context of the Roman Empire did not lead to peace and love and harmony (anything but), as it did not or would not here and now.  Homosexuality was then not considered a sin and practiced freely, although the idea of gay marriage was unthinkable - marriage was for offspring, or the "gens", which can only occur naturally one way.  Passing on power and wealth to males outside the family was then done by adoption - regardless of the age of those involved.  


Yet still, more than a vestige of the idea of free love and social harmony has been passed on to the political left.  While their critics on the right believe that the left is only interested in destroying traditional society, this is not always the case.  Many on the left do believe that freedom to have sex with anyone and with as many as the parties involved choose, along with the subsequent social legitimization of such groups or couples, will break down the selfishness that they see encapsulated in capitalistic societies.  


There is indeed a neat fit here if done as a rational exercise, but the past has shown - perhaps sadly - that such arrangements will not make for a more peaceful and advanced society (there were groups of people throughout  the world who until recently had any number of odd sexual practices.  None, to my knowledge, were utopias).  As usual, though, in this blog contemporary politics is never the main focus.  Instead, I would like to point out that something much more than rationalization was going on for the true soul-searching hippies of the 60's.  


It had to do with the resolution of internal conflict while using powerful psychotropic drugs.  I have had experience with such things, and much correspondence with others who have as well. As those of us know well, as one approaches the peak experience, a panic sets in, for to reach the "peak" or revelation, ones' ideas of self and society must be broken away - and are often done so forcefully by the workings of the chemicals involved.  The feeling one gets is part and partial with the feeling of going insane, about as uncomfortable an experience as one can have in this world. Because certain types of sex are especially taboo for our society - as they are for just about any society - the crumbling of this taboo (of its meaning, not in actuality) is particularly painful to the normal "self."  It makes it far easier to say, as many said than, "if it feels good, do it" - that is, don't feel guilty or worry about internal challenges to this taboo.  For as we all know, to be told to NOT think about pink elephants is a guarantee that one WILL think of pink elephants.  Get the sexual "hang-ups" out of the way and prepare for a much easier trip - or so it was thought.   This does not minimize the feeling of universal love that often comes with revelation - but this never, as far as I know, translates into rampant sexual energy.  This love is of a different sort, "agape" as the Greeks and Christians called it.  


Unfortunately the "free love" slogan of the hippies, as with most things dealing with spiritual things that are reduced to bumper stickers, has been down-graded in secular society.  But the hippies were only partially right as well.  There are fears that are worse than breaking sexual taboos.  The greatest serves as the obstacle to total trust, or what the religious call "faith."  While we might be able to convince ourselves that sexual desires are just another thing to not worry about, it is hard to lay everything we know as ourselves out on the line - about as difficult as putting your body on the line for almost certain death, depending only on some "god" or some holy power that will save you.  It is the basic existential fear and there is no shortcut to alleviate it.  Sexual openness does not hold a candle to total personal dissolution regarding fear.  To overcome this takes intense faith in a supreme and omnipresent power, however we might wish to envision it or call it.  A society that is looking for utopia but that does not understand this will simply continue to break the mold of the old while making cheaper imitations for a new.  FK           

Today, a new essay, "Chaco Canyon," under Essays in the website. FK

Writing this blog, I have found that there are a few main questions that rise again and again.  Laura George's book, "Truth," brings up the conflict between future- minded modernists (including George) who believe that we are advancing spiritually  in an evolutionary way, and those (the Perennialists) who believe we are cratering big time into the bottom of the materialist pit.  Perhaps it would help to write a list of pros and cons to these perceptions and compare them to see where it takes us.  It seems at this  point that some clarification is necessary, but I will leave it for another day.  

For now, I have started an autobiography by Joseph McConeagle, "Stargate Chronicles," that has left a certain impression at the very beginning.  McConeagle was THE star of the military Stargate program that experimented with and used remote viewing for information gathering purposes in the 1980's and 90's.  Since portions of the once top-secret program have become de-classified, at least one movie and several books have been made concerning it.  McConeagle was the outstanding player in this program, and he later verified publicly in double-blind experiments his incredible psychic talents.  Why the greater world has not come to believe in the "effect" must be as frustrating to people such as McConeagle as it was for Galileo to convince the Catholic Church of a sun-centered solar system, but we will leave that for another day as well.  

Instead, I'd like to focus on the initial part of the book, where Joe tells us what a miserable upbringing he had.   His parents were alcoholics, he lived in an impoverished slum, and he later joined the service to get away, only to end up in Vietnam.  He hated war - he called it "pure hate" - and yet stayed with the military as a career man because, we can suppose, he felt he had few options.  His first marriage was destroyed by military life, leaving him without his son who he adored, and a later marriage proved to be a monumental mistake.  He often drank too much and was frustrated by the military mind-set at nearly every turn.  He was nearly poisoned to death, on purpose, which led to his first near-death experience, and later suffered life-threatening illnesses from exotic stations in SE Asia.  Even after he entered the Stargate program, he was subjected to ridicule by many of those who knew his mission.  So far, tough, tough, tough.

And so I have found with the life stories of most psychics.  They have earlier lives of abuse or sickness or poverty or emotional loss. Coincidentally, shamans - the traditional psychic healers of tribal peoples - often also undergo great trauma before they are "called" to the spirits.  It is as if the steely facade of society - regardless of the society - must be weakened before a person is capable of grasping another or a parallel or a deeper reality.  If one satisfied with what one has, why change?   And so it seems that the greater kingdom is indeed inherited by the sick and the outcast and the lowly.  It also seems that it is not just our society that binds us to a limited reality.  Why is this so if we are otherwise capable of such knowledge?  It is, I believe, what is meant by an "age" : that at certain epochs of human existence, we all collectively fall in line with certain thought patterns.  Thus we might have an age of wonder at one stretch, and a countering age of materialism and cynicism at another.  

So for now, in our age, the psychically gifted must suffer for their gift. We might suppose that one should be careful what one wished for, but how many really want psychic abilities?  Is it worth the final price of being forever an outsider?  Perhaps the autobiography will answer this clearly, but I suspect we will be left in doubt - were the adventures from his gift worth the price?  FK