Once while living in Oregon, I went alone into the high mountains on a vision quest. I had been edgy and irritable in the city before leaving and had hurt my kids’ feelings. In camp, when I had slowed down and became centered, I realized just how much I had hurt them. I felt bad. My heart felt cold and constricted. Spirit said to me then, “turn the pain into love, Eugene.” I did so. My heart warmed and opened, and I felt so much love pour out of me. All that pain and anguish at hurting my kids turned into that much love for them. I knew they felt it back home too.

Around that time, I was working with a woman. Her husband didn’t love her, and she was trying to find her own way through life. In the middle of our work, her husband had a heart attack and asked to talk with me. Surprisingly, he opened up to me, told me that he had never loved, that he had always felt closed off and isolated from everybody. He told me that this was why he had had his heart attack.

When we feel love, our hearts open wide and feel warm. When we lose love through fear or hurt or anger or sorrow, our hearts constrict and become cold. If they stay closed, as my friend’s did, they become permanently constricted, and eventually falter, often fail. Some of us would rather die than open our hearts to love. Many of us do. Not me. I got the message up there in the mountains that day in Oregon. Sometimes I forget, but if I do, I have my mantra to help me open my heart again – “turn the pain into love, Eugene.”

No wonder so many folks in our culture are having heart attacks. They have so little love in their hearts, certainly not enough to keep them open and warm. I hope that everyone learns this, as my friend’s husband finally did in Oregon.

Carl Jung once said that power is the absence of love. Too many of us are into power, into having our way or else getting angry. “Turn the pain in love, everybody.” We need more love in this world.

In addition to the Rolfing I received while a student in training, I have also been Rolfed professionally. Since then I have never had a sore back or neck. Rolfing is one of the best things I have ever done for my body.

I have been Rolfed several times since, mostly to finish the development that began in the ten-week series. My body loves it – but not just my body. My awareness also grows with each session.

I remember back when I was still in the Rolfing class and one of the other students was working on my psoas muscle. As soon as he touched me there, I began screaming. At first I thought I was screaming from the pain, but then I had an image of myself as a little boy standing at the back door of our old house. I was naked, with my clothes in my hands, and my mother was freaked out and yelling at me. The screaming that I was doing in the class was the anger I had felt at my mother then but had been too afraid to express. It had been held in my psoas muscle ever since.
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The last time I went to a professional Rolfer, I wanted help with the leftover trauma from the sciatica I’d had when my father died. Although the pain was long gone, I still felt some discomfort. My leg felt as if it had been twisted, probably by me trying to avoid the pain. Also, my big toe was still numb. My Rolfer worked on me then for four or five more sessions. There was more to it than my leg and big toe. I had compensated for the pain by twisting my entire body. He had to begin the healing process from my center.

At first I didn’t feel any major improvement, but one day, several months later, I realized that my toe hadn’t been numb or sore for awhile. I didn’t know exactly when it had gotten better. It had happened slowly over time. Today I can stand solidly on my own two feet again. Today I feel balanced and whole in my body.

Rolfing, like acid, by working directly on body, works indirectly on consciousness too. Healing the one-sidedness of my body has also helped heal the one-sidedness of my consciousness.

I’m sitting here at the flight engineer’s station. The first engineer is taking a break, and I’m in charge. I’m the second engineer, a First Lieutenant in the Strategic Air Command (or SAC,) a branch of the United States Air Force. I am one of thirteen crew members. We’re flying in a B36, a giant six-engine bomber. We’re heading to Russia. This is it!

One of the observers in the back of the plane tells me that engines numbers two and three are putting out a lot of smoke. I look at my gauges. At first all looks okay, but then I see that I’m loosing fuel fast. Now the observer tells me he sees fire coming from these engines.

I realize that it’s up to me. I turn off the fuel to those engines. I still can’t stop the fires. The observer yells that it looks like the whole wing is ablaze. I begin to panic. The pilots tell me they are having trouble controlling the plane with the two adjacent engines out. Suddenly I hear an explosion. The observer yells that most of the wing is gone. We’re spiraling out of control. The pilot tells us to say our prayers and prepare to crash.
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The lights come on now and a voice comes over the load speaker – “Lieutenant Marks, there was a simple fix that you would have had to initiate at the beginning of this crisis, when the smoke was first reported.” I listen as the voice explains what I could have done. It seems so simple, hearing it now.

I’m in a flight simulator, a collection of computer run programs that present various possible situations that can occur in flight. I certainly failed this one.
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The other day, remembering my times in those flight simulators, I wondered if perhaps life itself, what we call life anyway, is a simulator, a life simulator. Is life itself a training program for a race of beings more conscious than us humans? Have human beings long been part of a breeding program of organic life simulators for this hypothetical race of higher beings? If so, perhaps this is why us humans, unlike all the other animals, have become more and more conscious over our long history. Perhaps we are organic simulators and have learned from the experience ourselves.

If this is so, it would explain much. For example, why did the gods speak so freely to us humans in our earlier days? Why did they have to? Perhaps because we needed to reach a certain level of consciousness in order to be relevant simulators for this higher race.

Most of us humans mistakenly think that we are the highest consciousness around. But what if we are basically organic computers running through various programs (the 64 Hexagrams of the I Ching perhaps?) that test our life skills, while the higher beings watch and learn both from our errors and our successes.

Today this other and higher consciousness, that has long coexisted with human consciousness, that has used humans as life simulators since the beginnings, has become primarily the silent witness. It seldom if ever becomes involved in our lives now, being content to learn by merely observing us as we live out our little lives.
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For another take on this, hear what Hyemeyohsts Storm says in his book, Seven Arrows. “The Six Grandfathers taught me that each man, woman, and child at one time was a Living Power that existed somewhere in time and space. These Powers were without form, but they were aware. They were alive.

Each Power possessed boundless energy and beauty. These living Medicine Wheels were capable of nearly anything. They were beautiful and perfect in all ways except one. They had no understanding of limitation, no experience of substance. These Beings were total energy of the Mind, without Body or Heart. They were placed upon this earth that they might learn the things of the Heart through touching.”
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Recently Aspen’s mother died. The next morning our neighbor across the street died too. I felt that death was out hunting in my neck of the woods. Was he coming after me too? After all, I was older than either of them had been.

These two deaths have had a very strong effect upon me. At first I didn’t even know this. But I watched my energy disappear. I started feeling old. Then I became sick, coming down with pneumonia. And I haven’t had pneumonia in years.

Finally though, I became conscious and realized what was happening. I realized I was in shock from these two deaths. That was why my energy had gone. That was why I became sick. I realized too that it was a wakeup call. If I had anything important to still do while I was in this body, I had better do it soon. I wasn’t going to live forever.

For one thing, I have decided, and have begun to identify with the witness, with this higher consciousness within me. This is the important part of myself, the part that will survive the death of this body.

Then the death of this human body will be like it was when the lights came on and the voice on the loud speaker told me what I could have done to save the plane and all of us aboard it. Death will be like it was back then when I left the flight simulator and returned to my own life.
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I’m remembering my early death experience from when I was a young boy and died on the operating table. At that time, I left my body and, after realizing that I wasn’t falling, that I was actually flying, I floated blissfully towards the white light that I saw before me. I was returning to my life as a powerful energy being, a sun perhaps.

However, I am glad that the doctors dragged me back into this body and this life. I’ve had more than seventy good years in this body since then. It’s been a great body. I’ve had a wonderful life too.

But I’m not ready to leave yet. I have a few important things to do before I finish being this life simulator. I want to be Wanderer again and walk my walk. I want to continue loving on my wife and raising our three boys too. I want to stay with them at least until they are young men. I am asking for enough time for all this.

After that, I’ll be happy when the lights come on, and the voice on the loud speaker tells me that I did well and welcomes me home.

Don Juan tells Carlos, “the reason you keep on coming to see me is very simple – every time you have seen me your body has learned certain things, even against your desire. And finally your body now needs to come back to me to learn more. Let’s say that your body knows that it is going to die, even though you never think about it. So I’ve been telling your body that I too am going to die and before I do I would like to show your body certain things, things which you cannot give to your body yourself.” (Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtland, p. 216.)
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I was on the Oregon coast years ago, after picking apples in Washington State, when this book came out. Reading it, while camped along the beach and relaxing, I came upon the above quoted passage. Something powerful woke in me then, and I felt a great exultation. I ran and danced over the dunes and down to the water. My body was truly alive for the first time ever. It was celebrating. It had finally been recognized. It was all about body.

I’ve been body from that moment on. I’ve been body with a mind. I’ve stopped saying “my body.” I am no longer some entity separate from my body. I am body.

I have come to realize that those religions are dead wrong and quite destructive that preach that we should transcend body – that this life of the body is an illusion or a trial and that life after death is the only true life. They would have us deny the life we have here as bodies in favor of some sort of afterlife of the soul.

The truth is that while we are here in this life, Spirit resides in body. If we seek Spirit, we must look within to the mystery of body. All my spiritual life has been spent exploring body. This is why I was sick and almost died as a young boy, so that I might focus upon and come to appreciate body. This is why I use medicine. It centers me in body. And my body knows it is going to die. My body knows that death will come soon enough. But, for now it is alive, truly alive in a wondrous universe.

I began while doing yoga in the late 60’s. In the classes, I was taught to systematically relax my entire body by focusing my awareness upon and relaxing in turn each body part until I had gone through my entire body. I found that, once my awareness was spread throughout my body, my mind with its many thoughts had quieted and I was in fact meditating.

Later, after reading The Secret of the Golden Flower (translated from the Chinese by Richard Wilhelm, the translator also of the I Ching, I realized another important aspect of meditation. The Taoists, in this illuminating text, speak of the circulation of the light – light being awareness. They say that one should move the energy of awareness between the two primary poles of the body – the “Heavenly Heart,” which is the point midway between the eyes, and the “place of power,” which is located at the solar plexus. I found that when I did this, I would profoundly deepen my meditation.

When I began my work as a psychotherapist, I found people arguing as to which was best, meditation or psychotherapy. They are different, true, and they each do produce different results. Meditation can produce calmness and centeredness without necessarily increasing understanding. Psychotherapy, on the other hand, can produce increased understanding of self but often without ever leading to a calm and peaceful center.

Eventually, I came to use both meditation and psychotherapy in my own healing work. I would begin each healing session, either individual or group, with a meditation. This brief meditation centered my clients and me in the here and now and gave us a chance to slow down and see what was most important to work upon during our time together. It also led to greater empathy and awareness on everyone’s part.

Does anyone else notice that most of the wars of this and the past century have been caused by followers of the big three monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? Interestingly enough, all three of them are based upon a very shallow understanding of the psyche and consciousness.

For these religions, there is only the lonely and sinful individual ego, isolated from everyone and everything. There is also their God, isolated Himself, off somewhere in Heaven. There is no in between. There is no depth. No wonder the proponents of these religions are always at war. They don’t even know what is happening in the depths of their consciousness, in what Freud and Jung and others have called the unconscious. They are incomplete humans struggling in a world that requires wholeness of being.

Members of these religions can be told how one should act, and they will try to live up to these religious expectations. However, by being ignorant of all that lies beneath the surface of their limited egos, they usually fail to do this. They usually fail because, for most of their time, they are acting from unconscious motives – without even being aware that there are such things and that they are doing so.
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Buddhists and Taoists, on the other hand, backed by extensive and well thought out systems of psychology and consciousness, have managed to stay out of most of the wars. They have correctly seen that wars are just unconscious outbursts of collective anger or greed. They certainly have never believed that violence is justified.

All of the major spiritual teachers of the big three religions were conscious and high folks. If their followers could be like them, there would probably be world peace and plenty. But most people don’t won’t to go through what those ancient Jewish holy men or Jesus and his crew or Mohamed and his went through. Most people don’t want to do what it takes to become conscious and connected to Spirit. They don’t want to find out who they are. They don’t want to be themselves. They just want to be told what to do. So they are given rituals and lectures and beads and sent out into reality.
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The Buddhists and the Taoists, however, offer us practical and easily doable ways of finding our own ways to ourselves and to Spirit. These ways are based upon a very sophisticated and deep understanding of the human psyche and consciousness.

From this deep understanding, they suggest meditation and various other physical disciplines. They tell us that when we have learned to turn off our heads, to silence our inner dialogue, we will begin to connect to the deeper and more holy reaches of our psyches. By this, they help us to find the God who is within each one of us.

By all this and more, they help us to become conscious of who we are and our role in this life.

I am always aware and wary of the new moon. It is a difficult time for me, for most of us probably. I am edgy then and not very clear. I am more closed off and grumpier than usual. I usually want to be alone. I have trouble staying focused.

New moon is like PMS for all of us all at once. It’s the death time of the month, the time before the rebirth. It’s the dark time of the moon, when her light is hidden from us and when we are physically weakest and lost in darkness and emotional confusion.

Our physical energy varies with the moon’s cycle. It is lowest at the new moon. We can easily overdo it and become sick then. We can easily become depressed and angry. It is the opposite of the time of the full moon, when most of us have an abundance of energy. If the werewolf symbolizes that abundance of wild animal energy that most of us feel at full moon, the hermit crab symbolizes the reclusive and backwards, or crabby, nature of the energy that we feel at new moon.

Living out of doors in the early 70’s, I began to notice the cycles of the moon and the seasons of the year. I would lie out at night, watching the moon and the stars course the night skies.

Living my simple life as a wandering medicine man, I could see the effects of the moon upon myself and others. I would notice this effect most when I was doing medicine. On the full moon, I would be in my body and would be wild and passionate. On the new moon, however, I would be physically quiet the whole time, wandering alone down darker paths.

In the summer, it’s not so easy to notice this energy difference and probably not so important for our physical and emotional well-being. But during the late fall and winter, the new moon is potent and dangerous in its dark and negative way. New moon then is a time to be slow, physically lazy, and always aware of the potential for negativity in ourselves and others.

Sometimes dreams are prophetic, sometimes talking about events that will exist far in the future. I had one such dream. It came to me long ago. It has only become relevant and meaningful today, fourteen years later.

In this dream there is a circle, one that I have to go around again. I am to carry my old book with me this time. I had almost thrown it away once. I’m glad I didn’t. It contains much of beauty and wonder.
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This circle has special meaning for me. I have tried to go around it twice before. Each time I have failed to complete it. This may be my last chance.

The first time I attempted to travel around this circle began after I had just finished my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, when I dropped out and moved from Venice to Berkeley. This was in the early seventies. Over time, I took the name Wanderer and became a wandering acid holy man. I did a great deal of acid in those days, and it was a time of magic and wonder in my life, a time when everything flowed, a time when I made a difference.

In those days, I spent a great deal of time by myself, hiking and backpacking alone in the mountains of California. I also traveled around the country, living in my VW van and staying to the back roads. I wrote it all down too, in my book that I called Wanderer’s Notebook.

Unfortunately, I never completed that circle. I never completed my book either. Instead, as I was completing the circle and returning to ordinary reality, my wife betrayed me. She cheated on me and then left, taking our baby daughter away. Thrown off center by this betrayal and loss, my life faltered, then failed. I lost the circle.

When I had finally found the circle again, years later, this time traveling and gathering with the Rainbow Family, I soon became Wanderer again. I did a lot of acid this time too. With my best friend Ramon, I left the West Coast and moved to Colorado. Together with some other brothers and sisters, we had a high acid house in the mountains above Boulder.

However, I never completed that circle either. Instead, I became inflated. I began to think that I was someone special. Soon enough, I crashed and burned.
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Since these two failed attempts to achieve wholeness of being, I have regressed to an earlier and more one-sided version of myself. I have become much less physical, more in my head, more introverted, and yes, more negative too. I have gone back to the beginning. And I have long hesitated to attempt the circle again. But it has now been fourteen years, and I am beginning it again.

The main thing I have come to understand about my life now from my old dream is that I still need to carry my old book along with me as I journey around the circle. Synchronistically, this past year, I have been rewriting my old book. This time, I have divided it into two books – The Birth of Wanderer and The Life and Death of Wanderer. The first one, The Birth of Wanderer is being published at this time in the Weekly Reader section of The Caldron (www.thecaldron.com.)

Rewriting these two books – and reliving those times as I do so – has let me see who I had been during these two previous attempts to complete the circle. Both times, I had been much more alive – more physical, more enthusiastic, and much more out there in the world of people and adventure.

Rewriting these books has also let me see how I failed to complete the two circles. The first time, I failed and lost my way because I had come to feel that my strength depended upon my relationship with my wife. When she betrayed me, when she left me, I lost my center. Over time, ever since then, I have learned to find the source of my power within myself, not in a relationship. I won’t make that mistake again.

The second time I failed because I began to think I was special. I became inflated and when the inflated ego bubble popped, I lost everything, even my connection with acid, a connection that had never failed me before.
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The goal of completing the circle has always had the deeper meaning of completing the path to wholeness of being and then bringing this wholeness back to share with the here and now collective world.

However, as a result of two serious operations and a death experience that I underwent as a young boy, I have a serious split within me. Because of my brush with death a part of me was lost. Before the operations, I was a normal healthy boy, physical and full of life. Afterwards I became very quiet and shy, very afraid of almost everything. My goal of completing the circle has always been to bring these two sides of myself together again.

Sometimes I am completely in my head, just sitting around and reading and thinking all day. Sometimes I am very introverted, focused almost entirely upon my inner life. Sometimes I am quite negative. And for the past ten years, I have been closer, probably too close, to my feminine side than I have ever been, being the mommy-daddy for our three boys. This quiet and introverted and overly feminine side of myself is one extreme.

Sometimes however, especially when I was doing a lot of acid, I was very physical, hiking and wandering about in the woods and climbing all the trees and rocks I come upon. Adventuring on my bike a lot too. Sometimes I was very extraverted, wanting to surround myself with high friends and fellow trippers. Sometimes I was very excited about my life. Seeing it as an adventure. Maybe I can let go of my introverted side and be this person again.
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This time around the circle, I want to stay in the middle, falling to neither extreme. I want to be both mind and body. I want to be able to be either introverted or extroverted, whichever is appropriate to the circumstances. I want to find a middle ground between being overly enthusiastic (inflated) and being overly quiet and subdued. I just want to be real, in touch with whatever the moment requires.

This time around the circle, I want to find my balance, my center. This time I want to complete the circle and actualize the wholeness of being that I find there – and then bring it back into the world in which we all live.