During the 60’s, those of us who wanted to create a more spiritual reality used various paths to become more conscious, loving, and kind.

We used various forms of dream work. This included analyzing our dreams and/or using active imagination, or visualization, to understand their messages. We learned from Jung and Perls and others what dreams are and how we could use them to become more whole beings. We learned that dreams speak in ‘God’s forgotten language.’

We discovered the I Ching, the ancient Chinese holy book, an extremely high spiritual book. We saw that the book was also an oracle that responded to whatever question we might ask by describing the situation that we found ourselves in at the time we asked the question.

Many of us began meditating in the 60’s, influenced perhaps by the influx of the many Buddhists who saw a golden opportunity and came to America to gather disciples. Many of us still meditate, just doing our own forms.

Many of us favored LSD in the 60’s. We weren’t afraid of it then as many folks are nowadays. We liked how it made us more clear and compassionate. We found that we could be completely open and honest with one another when we tripped together. We found that we couldn’t bullshit when we were tripping, not to ourselves or to each other. We called it acid honesty.
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Although I don’t think Stan Grof’s way, his LSD Psychotherapy way, is necessary – many of us have done it on our own, in our own ways – but it does work. The result of his LSD therapy, the sort of person one can become, is described in the following quotes from his bookLSD Psychotherapy (see pages 227 and following if your curious.)

“It (LSD) has mediated a profound spiritual opening in atheists, skeptics, and materialistically oriented scientist, facilitated far reaching emotional liberation, and caused radical changes in value systems and the basic life style.”

“Subjects free themselves from certain idiosyncratic perceptions, inappropriate emotional responses, rigid value systems, irrational attitudes, and maladjustive behavior patterns that are products of their early programming.”

“They suddenly see that their entire concept of existence and approach to it had been contaminated by a deep, unconscious fear of death.”

“The emphasis shifts from pursuit of complicated external schemes to appreciation of simple aspects of existence.”

“A selfish and competitive approach to existences is seen as ignorant, inferior, and ultimately self-destructive.”

“The western life philosophy, which confuses conspicuous consumption with richness of life is replaced by a new emphasis on “voluntary simplicity.”

“Another striking aspect of the psychedelic transformation is the development of intense interest in consciousness, self-exploration, and the spiritual quest.”

“The universe ceases to be a gigantic assembly of material objects: it becomes an infinite system of adventures in consciousness.”

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Those folks ‘in power’ today, those who are still trying to bullshit us so that they can ‘control’ us and the world, all those politicians and other leaders, were so afraid of LSD in the 60’s, afraid of how it was waking folks up, that they made it illegal and those of us who disagreed, outlaws.

Those bad guys are still out there. If we wish to overcome them, we have to be more conscious, more loving, and more kind. We can’t win by fighting them. We have to walk those peaceful spiritual paths again.

In my next note, I’ll share some of the positive results of our efforts in the 60’s, results such as environmental awareness, the growing equality of women and the feminine, the equality of gay men and women in our culture, the health and fitness movements that have led to organic foods and gardening, and the notion that it takes a village. I’ll look ahead too, wondering where we can take the current spiritual revolution.

Still thinking about children and personhood, I remembered how Henry Miller, in his book Tropic of Capricorn, talked about the difference between children and adults. In Miller’s opinion, once one becomes an adult, one loses one’s personhood and instead becomes a frightened and calculating being. In his life, Miller says he watched sadly as his friends grew up and stopped being real, stopped being persons.

In Miller’s book, he says: “At seven years, we knew with dead certainty, for example, that such a fellow would end up in prison, that another would be a drudge, and another a good for nothing, and so on. We were absolutely correct in our diagnoses, much more correct, for example, than our parents, or our teachers, more correct, indeed, than the so-called psychologists … The learning we received only tended to obscure our vision, From the day we went to school, we learning nothing; on the contrary, we were made obtuse, we were wrapped in a fog of words and abstractions.”

He goes on to say, “What I am thinking of, with a certain amount of regret and longing, is that this thoroughly restricted life of early boyhood seems like a limitless universe, and the life that followed upon it, the life of an adult, a constantly diminishing realm. From the moment when one is put in school one is lost, one has a feeling of having a halter put around his neck. The taste goes out of the bread as it goes out of life. Getting the bread becomes more important than the eating of it. Everything is calculated, and everything has a price on it.”
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Still thinking about the difference between children and adults, I also remembered what Tim Leary once said, lecturing to a crowd of us at the University of Oregon in Eugene. He told us that we should never become grownups, never become adults. He said that we should just keep on growing and reminded us that the word adult is the past participle of the Latin verb adulescere, meaning to grow up.
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In my life, I have continued to live as I lived as a boy. I am the same person I have always been. I have not left behind the honesty and awareness of my childhood. I have not finished growing. and I have not and never will become one of those uptight and frightened adults.

In my life, I don’t see myself as old. I’m still me, still the same person I’ve always been, just older than I was before And I must say, I’m proud of the seventy-eight trips around the sun that I’ve made so far. It’s been quite a ride, and I’m not done yet.

I just read Orson Scott Card’s introduction to his book Ender’s Game, one of my most favorite stories. Now I’m reading the story itself once again. At first, I though that Jake might want to read it to himself. But he and I have decided that it’s a bit over his head for now. So I’m reading it aloud to the entire family every night.

I have read Card’s wonderful story many times, but this was the first time I have read his introduction. It was beautiful, moving. Orson Scott Card is a beautiful person. In his introduction, in response to critics who said that children don’t talk and think like they do in Ender’s Game, Card wrote:–

“Yet I knew – I knew – that this was one of the truest things about Ender’s Game. In fact, I realized in retrospect that this may indeed be part of the reason why it was so important to me … to write a story in which gifted children are trained to fight in adult wars. Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along – the same person that I am today. I never felt that I spoke childishly. I never felt that my emotions and desires were somehow less real than adult emotions and desires. And in writing Ender’s Game, I forced the audience to experience the lives of these children from that perspective – the perspective in which their feeling and decisions are just as real and important as any adult’s.”
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I have always known that children are persons. Like Card, I was a person myself as a boy. So were all my friends. However, since I have grown up, I have been criticized by many adults who say that I shouldn’t talk to children as I do – as I did with the other children when I was still a child myself. They say I shouldn’t talk to them as if they were persons. They argue that children are not yet really persons. They are wrong.

Certainly, none of my children have ever criticized me for treating them as persons, for being real with them. They appreciate my respect and my honesty. I think it helps them to be more respectful and honest themselves.
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The public school system certainly does not treat children as persons. They definitely don’t want to see who my boys really are. And, because of that, they don’t encourage them to be real persons.

We have sent our son Callahan to a middle school noted for its artistic focus. But Callahan still has to take all the typical academic courses, none of which really interest him, except perhaps for science. He has to take these academic courses just because they insist he does so. And they have offered him only one course, a course in beginning art, that speaks to who he is as a creative person.

I watch the school system fill my boys with collective bullshit – as if they were empty and needed filling – trying to make them fit into the system’s way of thinking about the world. I watch them judge my boys negatively if they don’t conform to the system’s collective way. It’s obvious that they don’t want to know anything about, let alone further, the person who already exists in each one of them.

Aspen and I met in late January of 1985. We were engaged by the middle of March and married by late June. We have never looked back, have always loved one another and have never thought of ending our marriage.

With half of all marriages in the United States ending in divorce, we have decided to share our love story and how and why it has lasted for more than 26 years. So, if you are at all interested in a serious relationship with another person, especially if you want to have children some day, it will certainly be worth your while to read about how we have done it.
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The other day, while Aspen and I were out walking, we came upon a man we knew. He saw us and blurted out, “You’re holding hands.” Yes, we were. We do so whenever we can. We snuggle together every night too, and we make wonderful love. We’re still loving, after all these years. It has always come natural to us.

How did this happen, when it is so rare in the world? Well, when we met that fateful January, we were medicine folks. Every Friday night, we did Ecstasy and acid, first the Ecstasy and then several hours later high dose acid. We did this every Friday night for several months. Doing so, we opened up to each other completely. We came to know each other more deeply in that short time than most couples do in a lifetime of marriage.

The night we decided to get married, we were doing medicines. I asked Aspen if she wanted all of me. She said yes, and she has had all of me, all of my love and support and understanding ever since.
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After our courtship and our marriage, we began to spend more and more time backpacking and traveling. We did some climbing with a friend here in Boulder and in Joshua Tree. We went to more than one Rainbow Gathering too. We lived outside the law, and we were honest. We started in Boulder, of course, but we also lived briefly in California, in Mammoth Lakes, and in Arizona, in and around Tucson. We lived on the West Slope of the Rockies too, in Paonia, on an organic fruit farm.

When we were still living in Tucson, before we moved to Paonia, we wondered what else we could do with our love. We had been married for over 14 years. We had done almost everything we had wanted to do. What else could we do? The decision seemed to be made for us. Aspen was in her mid-thirties and was beginning to realize that she would have to have children soon if she wanted to be a mother.
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Although I had thought that I was done raising children, I was more than okay with us being parents together. I knew she would be a great mom. And I have always enjoyed being a dad. Being parents together would be our new life adventure. I certainly enjoyed actualizing her desire for children, and soon the babies began to come.

When they started coming, with Callahan being the first, we moved back to Boulder, and we now live just two blocks from where we started out 26 years ago, back when we first realized that we loved each other and wanted to share a life together. Since then we have come full circle in our life and our love. And now our love is actually stronger now than it was when we left Boulder all those years ago – way more than enough to nourish our three young boys.

The boys are 5, 8, and 11 years old now. They are more than a handful. They are all high maintenance, extremely loud, and overwhelming argumentative. They are also heartwarmingly loving and extremely interesting. It’s awesome watching them grow up and become people. They are my sons. God! What an obligation! What a responsibility! I love it.

I sure have to work hard to keep myself strong and healthy. I have to do yoga every morning and then, three days a week, lift weights at the gym. I have to walk or else hike in the woods somewhere around here nearly every day. I have to ride my bike as much as I can. I have to meditate every afternoon. I have to watch what I eat, how much pot I smoke, how often I get off, things like that. I have to take conscious care of myself as body.

I get really tired of having to do all this all the time – especially the yoga every morning while the rest of the family is breaking their fast. But the truth is, I am much more supple than most folks in their late seventies.

Aspen and I lift weights at the gym three days a week, I am really tired of working out. I’ve been working out with weights for almost sixty years now, ever since I was 19 years old. However, once we’re there, actually doing our leg presses and pulldowns and bench presses and curls and all that, I almost enjoy it. Although I sure am glad when I’m finished for the day.

I have come to see that I will have to meditate, do yoga, lift weights and keep on walking or hiking for as long as I live. However, I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of the walking part. And I do love my daily meditations.
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It’s worth it all though. It’s like when I’m hiking along a trail in the woods; there’s always something new I want to see just around the next bend in the trail. And when I get there, there’s always something new I want see just around the next bend, the one up ahead. Sometimes I feel I could hike on forever. There’s always something new to see.

It’s the same with my life. There’s always something new I want to see just around the next bend of my life. So I keep on meditating and doing yoga and lifting weights and walking. I know that whatever is coming up around the next bend will always be worth the hard work.

Actually, I can see from here that there’s a new bend ahead in the trail of my life, and it’s coming up soon. And, being almost up to this coming bend, I can already see more money coming, some good acid too. I can also see from here more high and conscious friends coming into my life.

As I approach this next bend in my life, I’m looking forward to seeing how I’m going to support this wonderful family of ours on a higher level. I definitely have my preferences.

Looking ahead to this next bend in my life, I want to see that I’ll have more loving time with Aspen, lots of it. I’m hoping for another 25 years or so. I also want to see my boys become men. I think they will be splendid, definitely worth all the time and effort that Aspen and I have and will have put into raising them.

Looking ahead to this next bend in my life, I want to see how long I can stay strong and healthy. I want to see how long I’ll be able to rassle and hike with my boys, how long I’ll be able to play with Aspen too. Mostly, I want to see if I can live to be 111. When I was a young boy, a voice told me that I would live that long.

Looking ahead to this next bend in my life, I guess I’m sort of interested in what will go down on the collective level too. I don’t have much confidence in the human race, but I do continue to work for our collective rescue, hopefully moving us all away from the brink of disaster where we have placed ourselves.

These days, I’m walking. And, as I walk, I stop often, and I stay slow, because I don’t want to be a part of the ongoing and speedy war machine that’s destroying this country of ours.

Walking, I’m not part of the problem, the need for wars because of the need for gasoline. Walking, I have time to think and feel and notice how the clouds move across the sky. Walking, I meet folks and hear how they feel and what they think. Walking, I am much more a part of everything, in harmony and sharing.

If I didn’t walk, it would be difficult for me to stay centered these days, difficult for me to even find my center! There’s an incredible amount of anger and negative energy being manifested by the collective. There is an equally incredible amount of denial – folks acting as if the various wars we’re involved in don’t even exist and life is normal.

The truth is that life will never again be what we have called normal. Actually, for most folks in the world, it never has been what we Americans have called normal anyway.

If we are to survive long range, I suggest that folks would be wise to put their trust into friends and family and not into institutions, especially not into those that have brought us to this brink of disaster. We need to come together and take care of each other. It is time.

We also need to balance the terrible and potent darkness that is being generated by the various wars with something equally awesome and potent of the Light. So, let us enjoy the good fortune we have, living here in this world of beauty. Let us radiate joy and love. And remember; lets not be angry, even with ourselves. Anger feeds the Dark Tower. And we’re trying for the White.

We take Jake to Children’s Hospital in Aurora twice a year. This is our third year. It’s always on a Friday, and we have to be there by 9 in the morning. It usually takes us an hour to get there.

It’s intense on the freeway today; everyone is in a hurry, as we all hurtle through space in our metal boxes. Fortunately the traffic is light this morning. We actually arrive at the Hospital in 45 minutes.

Usually all of us go with Jake. We make a day of it somewhere in Denver. This time we’re going to visit the 16th Street Mall and eat at Johnny Rockets.
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We park and walk into the hospital. It feels really good being here. We’ll be here for several hours. We elevate up to the 4th floor and wait to be called into the Muscle Clinic. Once there, we see the main rehab doctor, a Neurologist, and a Neuro-Psychologist. We also see a Social Worker, a Physical Therapist, and a representative of MDA. On the way out, we stop at the lab downstairs, and Jake has his blood drawn to check for his vitamin D level and his thyroid functioning.

By the time we leave, four hours and some minutes later we have heard that his muscles are still doing much better than expected. And everything else is okay too – except for the DMD of course. Jake’s a healthy little guy. We also began the process of hooking him up with other boys with DMD. He needs friends who are going through what he’s going through. They also gave us a script for a new lightweight stroller for when he gets tired walking.

The people we saw at the Muscle Clinic must be really frustrated. There is nothing they can do about the DMD, nothing at all. All they can do is make it more comfortable for the boys who have it and slow down its progress so that it takes longer to kill them.
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After we leave, we drive all the way into Denver on Colfax, the longest city street in the world. We don’t start at its eastern beginning, and we don’t go all the day to its ending in the west. We just take it from the hospital to the center of town and the mall. Colfax is not your typical city street. On the way, we see lots of naked dancing places, lots of pot shops, lots of tattoo parlors, and lots of darkness. I wouldn’t want to be there at night, not with my family.

The 16th Street Mall, on the other hand, is full of light and fun. The boys love the free buses that take us from one end of the mall to the other and back. When we get tired of riding the buses, we eat at Johnny Rockets. We all have burgers and fries. Good food, although no one sings to us this time. The food is bit expensive, but what the heck.

Back in our box, on the freeway again. I think we all feel the same. We just want to make it home safely. Hurtling through space again, we keep going, thankfully watching the traffic thin out as folks turned off into their own little cities on the way to ours.

Finally we leave the freeway, drive down Table Mesa, and then turn into our street and park in front of our house. We’re home.

Halloween is very important to our three boys. Callahan will be a large, black, scary demon with widespread wings and a hideous red mask. He’ll look awesome.

Jake will be Mario of the Mario Brothers. He’s going to look great. He has the overalls, the red hat with a big white M on it, the mustache, and Mario’s white gloves. He tried to get Zane to be Luigi, Mario’s brother, but Zane insisted on his first choice.

God Knows, how he came up with it, but Zane has decided that he will be Freddy Krueger – the youngest Freddy Krueger I know of. Maybe Freddy as a five year old. Zane even magicked a great Freddy Krueger costume from a family friend, complete with Freddy’s metal-clawed brown leather glove. He’ll be styling. They all will.
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Halloween is important to them for another reason. They like candy. Usually we get enough from trick or treating to last the entire year, from one Halloween to the next. This year we ran out a month ago. Terrible tragedy! We all suffered,

To remedy this misfortune, we are going onto the Boulder mall this year, Ideal Market and the various stores around it, as well as the various King Supers. And, of course, we will cruise the neighborhood for our final candy collection.

We also want to show off their costumes and scare lots of folks.
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A late bulletin, just in – Zane is now considering being a ghost pirate. He does look great in his pirate hat. Maybe he will be both, depending on the venue.

We’re excited! We’re home schooling Jake now. Before the boys were born, I wanted to home school all the kids we would have. But somehow we ended up in the Boulder Valley School System.

But then Jake started having more and more trouble in school. It was never easy for him there. Over time, he became very unhappy.

He’s out now though, and is enrolled in COVA (Colorado Virtual Academy.) He likes it a lot. He did three days worth of schoolwork today in just a few hours. The lessons are on the computer, and COVA has just sent him his own computer to use.

Aspen has done a tremendous amount of work setting all this up. She had to learn a lot of new stuff about her computer and the Internet. It has taken her days and has been very stressful. But she did it. And now, along with the computer’s help, she’s Jake’s teacher.

Jake has been happy these first few days of home schooling, happy for the first time since the public school started eight weeks ago. I wish we hadn’t taken so long to decide on home schooling, but we’re doing it now.

At first, when Jake was having so much trouble at school, I thought that he was bummed by his dawning realization that he has muscular dystrophy and what it’s going to mean for him. Now I’m thinking that he was more bummed than we knew by his school. Since we pulled him out, he has been so much happier and certainly less angry.

However, muscular dystrophy is still a major issue for Jake, He is just beginning to deal with it. But it’s hard for him to get a handle on what’s happening. After all, he’s only eight years old, really more like six years old emotionally because of the muscular dystrophy.

Jake needs help with this. In particular, he needs to be around more boys with MD. He’s so isolated now. We almost sent him to the MD camp last summer. I wish we had. He will go next summer. We’re also going to plug into the MD community in and around Boulder. There are a several MD boys living nearby, demonstrating the various stages of the illness.

This week has been easier than usual. For one thing, Callahan wasn’t with us the first three days of the week. He went with the rest of the 5th grade class to Cal Wood, a camp in the woods used by the school system. He and the rest of the 5th graders stayed in cabins and, according to Callahan, had great meals, seconds and thirds on everything.

Lots of hiking and exploring too. Callahan found a somewhat rare Water Scorpion in one of the ponds there too. He’s always finding critters in the woods. He’s a natural born naturalist.

While he was gone, the house was calmer and quieter, with just the two boys home with us. Callahan’s energy usually gets Jake and Zane really going. I also felt like I was on vacation, having to only take care of the two of them.

The best thing that happened all week was, when the school week was over on Wednesday (a short week this week,) we realized that Jake hadn’t been suspended all week. This was the first week he made it through the whole week since he started back to school three weeks ago. His teacher also told me that Jake was quieter and less disruptive in the class too.

Jake did bring a note home with him when he came home Wednesday. Although he wasn’t suspended all week, he still did get in trouble. Apparently he burped in the cafeteria, not just once but over and over again. When I heard this, I just laughed. The schools are so uptight. What if he had farted?

Thursday and Friday were no school days – but the two older boys were tested for their reading skills. Both did well. I was worried about Callahan because he doesn’t like to read, but he did great.

Jake, of course, reads all the time, from the funnies to books on trucks and space travel and Star Wars to books like Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat (Calvin and Hobbs.) He’s also an avid game player on Mom’s computer.

Zane went to school all week, although he has had a cough. As the boys get older, they can better deal with coughs and other viral invasions. When Zane was younger, if he started coughing, he would always get really sick, scary sick. He was even hospitalized once with pneumonia.

So was Callahan, when he was younger. We almost lost him. He could hardly breathe. I saw that he wasn’t well that morning and called Doctor Weber, who, thank god, was in his office, although it was a Saturday. He took one look at Callahan and told us to rush him to the hospital. We did, and he was in there for five days. It’s scary being a parent.

Then there’s Jake. He has Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy. He’s in serious trouble, not expected to walk in a few more years, not expected to live much past 30. And he hardly ever gets sick. He’s always warm too, sleeps without a blanket over him all winter. And he sure doesn’t buy into the standard MD prognosis. He still walks, runs, jumps, hops, and almost leaps up the stairs here at home. He’s an amazing kid.

He can be quite depressed too. He knows what’s coming. His depression comes out mostly in anger or in expectations that he won’t get what he wants or sometimes just in not liking the world around him. “This foods tastes bad,” as he gulps it down. “This toy is broken. I might as well throw it away,” as he fixes it. “This is a bad movie,” as he watches it to the end.

Jake’s very good with his hands. He’s really good with all his many transformers. He likes all kinds of cars and trucks. He probably has a hundred or more. When he’s not playing games on the computer, he’s looking up various toys and seeing their larger prototypes. He knows the make and model and year made of all the cars and trucks we see on the road.

I have noticed something really interesting about Zane. He is only four, although soon to be five. I watch him as he decides to watch one of our DVDs. First he selects one, takes it carefully out of its case, turns on the DVD player and the TV, opens the disc drawer, sets the DVD in, shuts the drawer, uses the remote to start the movie, selecting what he wants to watch when the DVD asks for his selection. He’s like this with everything. He acts like he’s at least twice his age.

His brothers couldn’t do any of this when they were his age. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it said about younger brothers – and I have heard a lot said about them – but if Zane is any indication, they certainly grow up quicker.

In 1973, Karen and I were traveling from Berkeley to the East Coast and back. It began as an incredible trip down the West Coast and through the Southwest, then up the Rockies through New Mexico and Colorado to Wyoming and the 1973 Rainbow Gathering. After that we headed down into the flatlands and the beginnings of the hot and humid east heading first through Kansas and Missouri to Tennessee and Gaskin’s Farm.

Later in our journey, while visiting Karen’s folks in Virginia, Karen’s mother took me aside the first day we were there and told me that she knew I had turned her daughter onto LSD. Hearing this, I was flabbergasted and floored.

I told her the truth. I told her that Karen had called up one day and invited me down to her place in Venice. Once I was there, she asked me if I wanted to do acid with her. I said yes and had a wonderful time. I went on to tell Karen’s mother that I have never regretted it and will always be grateful to Karen for turning me onto acid then.

Now it was her turn to be floored. At first, she didn’t want to believe me. For some mother-in-law reason, she already didn’t like me and wanted me to agree with her expectations. However, Karen heard us talking from the other room and came in. She told her mother that everything I had said was true.

We both told her that it had been one of the most important and meaningful things we had done in our lives. We told her that we still use it and probably always would. Karen’s mother didn’t want to hear this, but she did bring it up. She still wanted to make me the villain in her movie, but I wouldn’t play.

Afterwards, thinking about our conversation – as unsatisfactory as it was – I realized that it still took a burden off both me and Karen to be honest about our use and love of acid. I decided to write my parents a letter, telling them the same. Here’s what I wrote:
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Karen and I are with her parents in Virginia. The subject of marijuana and LSD came up in conversation. I wanted to give them my views on the subject. I realized though, that I want to discuss them first with both of you.

I’ve been smoking marijuana for over fifteen years and using LSD for over five. I like both of them very much. Both have taught me a great deal about myself and about life. I’m a better person for having used them.

People have used various plants and chemicals to change their consciousness ever since we began as hunters and gatherers, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Most have experienced this changed consciousness as being of a holy or spiritual quality.

Ten years ago, LSD was legal and respected and used extensively in psychological research and therapy. At that time I was asked to be in a LSD research project. I refused then because I was too frightened. It wasn’t until five years ago that I became brave enough to finally try it.

I was immediately impressed with how much I could learn about consciousness when I was using LSD. As a trained research scientist and psychotherapist, I could see enormous possibilities for important and exciting explorations into the psyche, into healing ways.

However, soon after this, LSD became illegal. All research and all therapies that used it were stopped. At first I continued to use it in private but not in my healing work. But then I decided finally, a year ago last April, soon after I moved up to Berkeley, to devote all my energies to exploring my own and others’ consciousness and to use LSD in my healing work, even if it were still illegal.

Many great discoveries, important inventions, tools, whatever, were first greeting with fear and skepticism by the general public. Electricity is one such example. At first, it was thought to come from the devil himself.

At times people have been persecuted and hounded, killed even, for their religious beliefs. The persecution of the early Christians is one such example of this.

Today, people are persecuted who view LSD as an extremely important tool, one that mankind has urgent need of at this present time – for both research and healing. Today, people are persecuted who use LSD as a holy sacrament, as a means of achieving communion with God, and through God with all life.

I’ve been afraid to share any of this with you. It has been difficult for me to believe the world is different than I thought. The world is different though. I’ve seen, for example, that folks can be unafraid of one another and can live a life filled with love.

I’m going to continue using marijuana and LSD. They are the main thrust of my work of exploring consciousness. This is important work, and not just for me. I don’t ask you to see this as I do. I just hope you will give me encouragement in my life and in my work. I love each of you and want each of you to love me.

eugene

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Postscript: –

I did feel better after writing and sending the letter off to my parents. I was being honest and open with them and it felt good. However, the letter didn’t seem to affect my relationships with them in any way. My mother never responded to what I had said, not at all. My father did say once that I was okay, but it was too bad that I had listened to that O’Leary fellow.