I Think....

I think God wants us to grow. I believe that the universe is hungry for us to expand - and it is continually offering us the means to accomplish this.

Ok, so let’s back up for a second, I haven’t written in a while and from that statement you might think that I have completely lost my marbles. No doubt I have… but I lost them long ago. Actually, the above was stimulated by watching my son deal with a bully on the baseball diamond and some demons that some friends and family members are fighting. I’ll explain.

Many people feel that meditation is the prime exercise for this expansion, and while in theory I agree that it is hugely beneficial, I have to add my own personal experience based caveat; while I love to grow my conscious “net” though meditation I have to say that my very deep development always came through my very hard experience where I learned to dissolve fear while facing fear, and expand into new realities by engaging new realities.

I’ll get back to Phil.

After being hit twice by this particular little league pitching staff, there was an “incident” on the ball diamond where Phil ended up punching this kid lights out. I think it was the taunt of the second pitcher as Phil walked to first base. The opposing team didn’t like Phil’s snap throws to first and third that picked off three of their players. (It is funny how people deliver messages in the sporting world!)

Now, I would never condone violence on a ball field, especially from my son, but as the father of the child who delivered the right hook. I did sit back for a split second and appreciate its precision. I know it’s a boy/dad thing! However after the fray, Phil was mortified and very upset that he had lost his cool. It was a good lesson and it reminded me of a past experience from my teenage days.

I thought I nearly killed this kid one night walking home from my girlfriend’s house. Maybe I had never seen so much blood, maybe it was the anger I felt after seeing this kid pick on some friends of mine earlier in the day. But there we were in a dimly lit parking lot, Jack just full of himself, probably high and wanting to go. I walked away from him after hearing the four and seven letter words directed at me, my family, my mother and my first love. And then it happened. I felt his hand tug on my shoulder I spun around and the rest as they say, is history…

Afterwards I saw God.

It was the last place I expected to encounter Him, but He was there and he spoke to me through my pain. I was certain that Jack was dead and I was also certain that my life as I knew it was over. After the bloody encounter (triggered by two obese egos and an argument over personal territory) he was deeply unconscious and on his way to hospital and I was in my own version of Dante’s inferno. Within minutes I was deeply remorseful, within hours I believed I was on my way to prison. When I walked home that night, it was about midnight, I felt as though my world had collapsed. If he was dead, and I was sure he was, I was about to lose everything that I held dear; ironically everything I had become complacent of. It was then that the realization hit me; I was about to lose the most precious gift of all.

After talking to the authorities (apparently a patrolman saw the incident as it was happening. The neighbors called the police on Jack before I happened on the scene - he was a malicious kid and already spent plenty of time at the police station), I ran home. I seemed to be flying, the street lights were glowing, and looked like celestial orbs. When I got home my folks were asleep in one room, completely unaware of my crime and my pain. As I lay on my bed my life would be changed for ever – no chance to go to college, play tennis or even have a family, I would be taking Jack’s place in the Joliet state penitentiary …I was about to lose everything!

Then another startling realization; the boy I kicked around in that dimly lit park parking lot like a football, the man I had thought my enemy, was also a human being, he was Jack Senior’s and Barbra’s son. I was filled with remorse. I unashamedly laid on my back and prayed to God, I asked Him for one more chance, I promised that if He allowed this jerk to live I would turn this baby around, I would change my life. After a very long dark night of the soul I found out that the he had not only survived, but he was walking around completely without serious injury. He was scared, banged and battered and talking smack! The little Shit! I kept my promise, I renounced violence and I started my search for meaning.

The huge revelation for me here was that all those folks that I felt were my enemies were not my enemies, I have no enemies.

Another experience based epiphany occurred when I started to delve heavily into the martial aspect of the combat arts and learned how to kill people. You would think that if you trained intently in a killing art that it would give you a thirst for killing, but the opposite is true, the ability to kill, taking the martial arts to it’s obvious ends, triggered a transition in me, I could feel how ugly it was to hurt another person, and suddenly all I wanted to do was hug everyone.

I was actually happier than I had ever been, all I wanted to do was help people, serve people, and the thought of harming another human was the furthest thing from my mind.

These revelations might seem obvious…but at 18 years of age, not so. I know we all have read about the futility of violence many times… and have read about killing all your enemies by making them friends, no doubt. But for me this was not mere information taken from a library or a book of quotes, it was not learned, this was earned wisdom, it was actual elixir.

I can now say with certainty that violence always rebounds on its self, and use this knowing to “uncreate” violence in all its forms. I can say I have no enemies with absolute faith and pray even and especially for those that would do me harm.

This is what that extreme physical experience gave me.

Over the years I have had similar thoughts and revelations in meditation, but until I tested them, they remained simply pregnant pieces of information looking for a birth in the outside world.

But of course I was up for the challenge because I wanted to be free. As much as I love meditation and as much as I practice it and concur on its benefits, I do find that people are often guilty of courting deep states of relaxation in order to avoid raw states of experiential growth. I was never a man to sit at a bar and talk challenge, or theorize challenge or intellectualize challenge. I didn’t take the concept of challenge to a lab and do qualitative and quantitative experiments with mice or rats. I took my bones out onto the court, field or ring and I was my own experiment. I was ‘Rat A’ and the world was my laboratory. If it worked I got to walk away. If it didn’t I ended up on my ass or a hospital ward.

Ironically what I found was that all the external challenges I faced in the world of men turned out to be internal challenges, they all forced me back inside. The real Jihad is the internal jihad. In fact all jihads are battles with the self; the self is your only friend and the self is your only enemy.

But for me it was only in facing the fears and challenges that I had created out there - because ultimately they are only projections from the self I know that was deep let me better explain.

The bigger challenges are often closer than you think.

It is easier to march angrily through your town with an ‘anti-war’ banner than it is to pick up the phone and end the war with the sister that you don’t talk to anymore, the ex-wife that hates your guts or the son/daughter that you haven’t seen since a family argument all those lost years ago. People want to stop the war ‘out there’ while the war in their own life, or inside their own bodies is raging away almost un-noticed and often ignored.

I think that ‘out there’ is often an easy distraction for what is ‘in here.’

People are in love with the idea of challenge but do not actually take on the real challenge, they want to change the world but are unable to even change their own personal habits. They want sovereignty over the material before earning sovereignty over the self.

Idyllic retreats and lonely caves are nice and I highly recommend them for respite and recovery, but they do not prepare you for the world of men. The world of men is where you prepare for the world of men.

With that thought as my sponsor I changed my whole universe for the better. And my method was simple; I made a list of all the things that I dreamed of doing, all the things that I was frightened of doing…and now I am doing them.

But in order to do that I had one major hurdle to over come.

My self.

I was my own enemy.

So I killed my enemy by making him my friend.

If you want to master the world, first master yourself. If you want to take on the world, start first by taking on the self.

Til’ next time (hopefully much sooner!)