Chapter 11 – Naked and Alone

Centered

He’s finally back at Dinky after the long winter in the city. He’s tripping again; and today, for the first time ever, he’s witnessing a centering process that, until now, has always happened without his awareness. This process has always involved an initial and fearful conflict and then a subsequent resolution. In fact, each acid trip has been such a centering process; and each time that he has been able to center himself on acid, he has come down more centered in his life.

Today he’s in conflict as to whether or not he can actually do the work of the dissertation and earn his Ph.D. So he lets himself become centered. He listens with his inner ear. Something within him is hurrying him. Who? What is wanted? What is the hurrying fear? He listens and understands finally that he’s afraid that he won’t be able to finish his work at school.

“You can’t force work,” says a healing voice from within. “You have to want to work. You have to enjoy studying eye contact.”

He understands this, and now he’s able to see the deeper, underlying reason behind why he hasn’t been able to relax and enjoy the work of his dissertation. He has been afraid he would fail.

The voice continues – “You won’t fail, not with it being so important to you. You know it’s your initiation ceremony into manhood. You want to be a man, don’t you? Why would you fail?”

Finally, after all these months, he begins to see that he won’t fail.

He relaxes now and looks about, finally seeing all the beauty and wonder about him, for the first time really. His body can finally relax and enjoy the warmth now, lying there in the sun like a big happy lizard.

Later, thinking back. The main thing he learned earlier today while he was coming onto the acid was that he has to want to write his dissertation. He can’t force himself. As soon as he saw this and as soon as he stopped being afraid of failing, he began to see the work in a new light – as something that he could actually enjoy doing and finish easily.

He has good ideas, and he’s good at organizing. He can certainly organize his research. He’s beginning to see that he can enjoy the work. He is actually quite good at what he needs to do.

All he needs to do really is to take all the ideas from the previous literature on eye contact and weave them together with his own ideas and with the results of his research into a meaningful and coherent presentation. That’s all he needs to do.
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Naked

He’s tripping again today, and he doesn’t even know why. Right now, his life feels so crazy and scary. He’s alone again today, and he’s seeing just how far away he is from all his anchors – from family and friends and work and school. And for what? Why?

It is much more peaceful here at Dinky than in the city, and usually he’s more peaceful here too. The birds are singing as they fly overhead from tree to tree. The water is singing as it dances over the rocks. The wind is singing in the trees. His heart is singing too, almost overwhelmed by all this beauty of bird and tree and water and rock and sky.

So, peace and beauty and wonder. These are reasons to be here. And growth too? He has been growing here. He hopes the new life within him continues to grow here – the young boy child becoming a man.

When he was last in the city, he cried bitterly because he couldn’t be that young boy there, not as he is in these mountains. In the city, he has too many layers between the real him and the world. He still does try though – even there.

He’s just not coming together today. He’s afraid to let go. He knows though, that if he doesn’t, he’ll end up exhausted from his day. He needs to let go, so he can get back all the energy he put out to get here.

Later…. For a long while today, he was beaten, lying alongside the creek, just trying to find some warmth, a frightened animal only. But now…. Now he’s walking up Dinky Creek with Gypsy. First he leaves behind his moccasins, and then he leaves behind the rest of his clothes. Now he’s naked but for his knife in its sheath and tied about his waist by a leather thong.

He and Gypsy walk up Dinky Creek together, up this awesome valley carved out of solid granite, through this incredible beauty! He and Gypsy see death too – two mountain lion cubs, drowned in a pool off by the side of the creek. He and Gypsy ramble up to Dinky dome and sit here for awhile with the setting sun. Afterwards they head back down the creek – following its song all the way home.

Still later…. They’re back down by the big pool now, the one with the awesome waterfall. They’re sitting here under a majestic Juniper tree. He was really stuck in his trip earlier, lost and scared and confused, but he got past it by taking off all his clothes and offering himself and his masculine strength to Spirit. He let go and got naked, finally removing all the protective layers between himself and the world.
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Alone

He has really enjoyed being naked and alone today. He has seldom if ever been this alone. In fact, except for the few times at Lodgepole and here at Dinky lately, he has never in his life been completely alone.

Coming to the mountains as often as they have lately, he and Karen have acquired a hunger for being alone with Spirit. It speaks for the strength and the confidence of their love that they can feel good about being separate from one another and alone for a time.

In fact, after tasting the joys of being alone, of being a young boy playing, with no one else around to consider, it definitely speaks of his love that he even wishes to return to Karen and their camp. And he does so wish, although he does know that tonight and every time he returns, he’ll lose something of himself that even their love cannot replace.

And what of the others in his life – his family and friends and work acquaintances, his patients, all the strangers that he has to relate to in the city, and even the police, out there trying to bust folks like him – what of all them? If he can’t even be completely himself with Karen at Dinky, how can he be real with any of them? No wonder he always loses touch with himself down in the city!

He comes all these hundreds of miles from LA, leaving behind his work, his patients, his family and friends. Then once he’s settled into his camp, he drops acid and goes off by himself as soon as he can – just so he can shed all his personas and be naked and himself again.

He always loses himself down there in the city and then has to come back to these mountains to find himself again. But has he ever really known who he is? It’s not so much that he leaves the mountains and loses himself down there. He lost himself down there a long time ago, when he was a little boy, and it’s just now, being alone at Dinky, that he’s finally beginning to rediscover himself through mystery and play.

He’s finally heading back to camp. It’s already dark. He’ll be watching himself when he’s back with Karen again after this long day of being alone. He’ll be watching, trying to see what it is in him that’s afraid to stay, that leaves him whenever he’s with her. He wishes all those frightened parts of himself would just speak up instead of disappearing whenever he’s with Karen or others. He wishes they would let him hold their hand, so to speak, and introduce them to her and the rest of the world.
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Chapter 12 – The Middle Way

The Con Man Meets the Holy Man

Jim Bender was one of the guys he used to run with when he had just gotten out of the Air Force. Jim was his brother’s friend, a really good-looking guy, except that his head was too big for his somewhat small body. Jim was a pickup artist with the women, a con man, and a sneak thief. He stopped hanging out with Jim after awhile though, especially after he started UCLA.

The last time he saw him, years later, was when Jim came to his door, a salesman for something. He never found out what Jim was selling though, because, as soon as Jim saw him open the door, Jim pretended that he had known he was living there and had just dropped by to say hello.

It’s been years since that time at the door. He thought he had outgrown Jim. But he just dreamt that he’s with a large group of people and Jim is here with them. They’re all meeting the holy man, and he even gets to talk with him for awhile. He’s very excited just being with him. But when he presses for a closer relationship, the holy man points to his friends, especially to Jim. The holy man asks him how he can expect his friendship when he’s still like that.

In his dream, Spirit is asking him to let go of his immature ways, especially those dishonest aspects of himself that Jim symbolizes so well. It’s easy to see that this unconscious and immature con man, who is acting upon the world from within him, is in the way of any real relationship with his inner holy man.

Ever since his dream, he’s been noticing the con man in himself, especially in the little ways he cheats and cons for money – the slightly falsified time cards at Footlighters and the way he tries to influence people to become his patients. It is difficult to let go of these old ways, those old friends really. He’s been a con man like Jim for so long now – and usually without even knowing it.

He understands that he needs to find his own balance between these two aspects of himself – between taking care of himself by hustling and by trusting himself to God completely. And he needs to keep these two sides of himself separate too. He can be the holy man and turn people onto themselves and each other, but only if it’s not also a con, if he’s not just doing it for the money.

He knows in his head that he can follow the way of the holy man and have everything he needs. But right now, at this time in his life, he’s finding it very difficult to let go and trust to God. He guesses he’s not quite ready to be a holy man.
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Wanderer

He dreams that he meets this old man, a wanderer who’s just passing through. They talk for a long while, and he finds that he likes the old man a lot. He thinks he’s awesome!

After they have talked for awhile, they go into this sporting goods store together, and he steals himself a knife out of one of the two display cases. The old man even helps him to select the best one; and he has no trouble taking it without being noticed.

The old man is old and lonely and needs a place to stay. So he invites him to come live with him. The old man takes him up on his offer. He tells the lonely, old hobo that he has to go to work for awhile. Can he find something to do while he’s waiting for him to finish? The old man says he can, and they make arrangements to meet again when his work is done.

The old man leaves now, and he goes off too, looking forward to the end of his work and to being with him again.

Thus begins the single, most important relationship of his life. This old, wandering hobo soon becomes his inner guide and companion, and, in the many years to follow, he and this old man will gradually merge into one being, becoming Wanderer.

The old man comes to him old and tired and needing a place to call home, tired from wandering without attention or respect, ever since the god of the Jews and the Christians and the Muslims took everyone’s attention away from him.

He’s Hermes, the wandering messenger god of the old Greeks. He’s Wotan, the wandering storm god of the old Norsemen. He’s an archetype of the collective unconscious, come to him from God knows where. He’s that aspect of consciousness that the Bushman call Mantis, that the American Indians call Coyote. He’s Trickster. The old wanderer is a part of him now, of everyone really, a part that’s been forced to wander outside of consciousness, waiting for the world to open up to him again.

When he wakes up the next morning, he feels sick, and he really doesn’t want to go to work at the clinic. But he drags himself out of bed and out onto the freeway. Then, just as he drives up to work, he suddenly becomes clear and energized. He knows exactly what he’s going to do. He needs to put all his energy into his Ph.D., so he can be with his new friend soon.

As soon as he realizes this, he walks straight into Dr. Myden’s office and tells him that he’s quitting – and he goes instantly from feeling exhausted and quite ill to feeling very high and happy. Now he can be with Wanderer. Now he can do his own thing in the world!
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The Ragged Folks

“Laying low,

Seeking out the poorer quarters,

Where the ragged folks go,

Looking for the places only they would know….”

(The Boxer, Simon and Garfunkel)

Whenever he hears these words, he’s thrilled to his core. This is where he wants to take his life just as soon as he has finished his work on the Ph.D. This is where he wants to go with his hobo companion Wanderer. He wants to leave behind the university, with its overly intellectual and extremely insulated culture, and go out “where the ragged folks go.” He wants to explore new realities, all those that have long beckoned to him from outside this academic life that he has known.

He thinks here of Jack London’s book, The People of the Abyss, in which London describes how he left behind ordinary life and entered an extremely poor section of London, trading his clothes for rags, and then, with only these rags on his back and with no money at all, he entered those “places only they would know.” He stayed in this poor section of London for a summer, living alongside the other poor folks, always just a short step away from the poorhouse – the poorhouse being a jail really that used those wretched folks for almost free labor. London certainly came to know more about poverty than any academic psychologist or sociologist ever would.

He thinks here too of Carl Jung, who once said that if we ever really want to learn about human nature, we should go out into the streets, the marketplaces, the bars, the political meetings, the sporting events, and all those other places where people come together. Out there, we would learn more in one day about human nature and ourselves than we ever would in the artificial and trivial world of academia. And we would learn all this, not just by observing others, but by also observing ourselves as we interacted with the real world.

Lately, he’s been thinking about this a lot. For a long while, Spirit has been encouraging him to plunge into real life just as soon as he earns his Ph.D., rather than hiding out in an office like most of his profession. He remembers the submarine captain telling him that he would be with him when he was done with his work. He remembers telling Wanderer that he would take him home with him afterwards. He’s almost finished now and more than ready to follow those ragged folks home.