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.

The Tao of love teaches that we must “conserve the seed.” (The Secret of the Golden Flower, p. 48) “The ancients really attained long life by the help of the seed-power present in their own bodies.” (p. 69)

Taoism is spiritually wide and includes many differences, but all Taoists would agree that we must conserve our seed. In The Secret of the Golden Flower, it is written that “every man who unites bodily with a woman feels pleasure first and then bitterness; when the seed has flowed out, the body is tired and the spirit languid. It is quite different when the adept lets spirit and power unite.” (p. 69)

The legend of Old Master P’eng, although ambiguous in this regard, is often recounted to support this view. He reputedly lived to be 880 years old. However, it is also said, as the writer of The Secret of the Golden Flower ruefully admits, that he lived to this age, “because he made use of serving maids to nourish his life.” The author, greatly influenced by Buddhism, says that this must be a misunderstanding – Master P’eng must have lived that long by using “the method of sublimation of spirit and power. (p. 70)

Other Taoists agree that we must conserve the seed so that we can power the circulation of light, but they argue that we can do this without denying lust. They agree that lust in a man, when stirred, desires women and if unchecked would create new life. But they also say that if we retain our energy instead of allowing it to flow outwards into the woman, it “penetrates the crucible of the creative and refreshes and nourishes heart and body.” (p. 35)

Old Master P’eng knew exactly what he was doing with those serving maids, making love often, getting off seldom or never. He knew that making love has little or nothing to do with getting off unless you’re trying to create new life. It’s no wonder that he lived so long, using all his turned on energy from all that love play to fuel the circulation of his light.

Aspen and I met in January of 1985. We proposed to each other on St. Patrick’s Day, and were married on June 23 of the same year, twenty-five years ago. Right from the start we knew we were meant for each other. And we really were. We have had a wonderful 25 years together.

We spent the first 14 years enjoying our relationship. We traveled a lot of the time. We moved about a bit, but always returned to Boulder. We lived for a while in Tucson, Arizona, in Mammoth Lakes in California, and in Paonia, in western Colorado.

Once we lived in a van for almost a year, telling folks that we weren’t homeless, just houseless.

We went to a fair number of Rainbow Gatherings too – Missouri, Vermont, Minnesota, Colorado twice, Montana, Wyoming, and best of all, Nevada. We met a lot of good folks and made a lot of good friends.

We also backpacked as much as we could. Most of our backpacking trips have been here in Colorado, mostly in the Rocky Mountain National Park. Our favorite camp in the park was up in Glacier Gorge. We have also backpacked several times into my old camp at Dinky Creek in the High Sierras of California. Each time, it was like coming home. Dinky is and always will be my spiritual home, because of what I went through camping there in the sixties and early seventies,
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After 14 wonderful years of sweet loving and traveling and living in wilderness, we felt that we had to find something new that we could do together that would also be fun and fulfilling. We decided then that we would have children and become parents together. Except for raising Ariana during the first years of our marriage, from when she was 11 years old until she was 18, we had been happily married without children. Having children again would be a new and exciting adventure for us.

Callahan was the first, coming to us in November of 1999. He was conceived in Tucson, Arizona, but by the time he was born, we were living out in Paonia, on Colorado’s west slope. But then, when he was 8 months old, we decided to return to Boulder.

We enjoyed being his parents so much that we decided to have another kid. Jake was the result of that, and he was born in June of 2002.

Although we toyed with the idea of having a third kid, even trying for a while to conceive, we felt we had enough on our hands with Callahan and Jake. But, on the anniversary of our marriage proposal to each other, on St. Patrick’s Day, we made wonderful love, and nine months later, in December of 2005, Zane came to us.

Three boys! Although we had hoped for a girl, somewhere in all this, we were happy with the boys. We decided then that we had enough. After all I was already in my seventies, and Aspen was getting worn out physically. She had been pregnant or nursing for over ten years by then, and her body was starting to wear out.
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The boys are now four, eight, and ten years old, and we’re beginning to feel that we might make it. It has been much more difficult that we could have ever imagined. The worst of it is all the yelling and arguing that goes on constantly between the three boys. We know though, that this is part of their growing up. We accept it, sometimes giving ourselves time-out and going off alone together into one of the more quiet rooms of our house.

We haven’t been out on a real date since Callahan came to us. But we are still having fun, and we really like being mom and dad. In fact, I’m very sad when I think that Zane will be the last kid I’ll ever raise – at least in this body. I love babies and little kids before they start getting their egos. But I have also liked watching my two older children, Jonathan, now 48, and Ariana, now 35, as they have grown into adulthood.
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These days, when we’re not being full on parents, when we’re free to turn our attention upon ourselves and each other, we’re usually so tired that we have very little energy to hang out together. Our only time alone in the school year has been in the morning when all the boys are in school. We’ve been going out to breakfast during this time, just to get out of the house and be alone with each other.

In the summer – it’s summer now – we have even less time to be alone with one another. In spite of this, we love and lust for each other immensely. We have never faltered in our love. We have both been completely open and honest and faithful and have always had each other’s backs.

Someone suggested that we keep going for another 25 years. I’m tempted. I’ll only be 102 and Aspen will be only 71. We could do it. The boys would like that.

Aspen and I also have our own trips. I do a lot of writing, working on two books now and writing notes regularly for my blog. I also continue to explored consciousness and reality with the aid of my medicines. Aspen has been spending a lot of her time lately knitting and pursuing her other fiber arts. She’s beginning to sell some of her work now.

We’re beginning to find new friends too. Most of our old friends weren’t parents and dropped us, and most of the parents we have met these past ten years have been boring. Our new friends, as well as a few of our old ones, mostly fit the categories of uncles and aunts and seem to enjoy our kids as well as they like us.

I do think that I’m going for it. The next 25 years ought to be amazing, watching our boys grow up into men. I wonder what else will come our way.

The I Ching translates and is also known as the Book of Changes. The Chinese word “I” has three primary meanings. These are the easy, the changing, and the constant. The easy requires no effort and there is no need of thought. It is simple and without error. It is doing what comes naturally. The changing is that which is always occurring, the only constant. If we look at our lives and at nature, we immediately recognize this constant change. The constant aspect of “I” is embodied in the Tao, the way through life that combines the opposites of yin and yang, the receptive and the creative, into a constant and meaningful whole.

The I Ching says that change is the only constant, that all else is ephemeral. It is like the water of a river, nothing is ever the same. The only constant is the movement of the water flowing on. The early pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Heraclites, in an example of cultural parallelism, declared in a surviving fragment of his writings that “everything flows.”

As we used to say in the early hippie days, change is the flow. Everything does flow, and being in the flow is easy and the only way to a healthy and fulfilling life. Being in touch with the flow, the Tao, was and still is considered the true path to wisdom. As the I Ching says, the task for the superior person is to flow through each change as it occurs, staying always centered and aware, learning from each change, and growing in wisdom.

The I Ching assigns to man a place in this. He is not powerless. Change is not chaos. Man can influence change. He cannot work against it; he has to work with it, going with the grain, the flow. He has to recognize the beginnings of change. Knowing the beginnings, he can introduce a seed, an influence, into the flow. Further, he can influence the development of this seed.

Man thus has a large role in the course of events, both in the natural and in the social spheres. He is not only master of his own life and fate but is in a position to influence events far beyond himself.

In his book, Venture to the Interior, Laurens Van der Post recounts his experience of returning to Africa to explore vast highland areas in South Eastern Africa. It is 1949. He has been at war since 1940, in a Japanese prisoner of war camp for several of these years, and has just returned to England. He wants to settle down, to rest.

However, the Foreign Office tells him that he is the only one who can do this for them. So, after a brief visit to home and family, he leaves for Africa in a speeding airplane.

Arriving in the town of Blantyre, in what was then called Nyasaland, he visits with old friends from the war and before, sitting on the veranda of the colonial club sharing gossip and memories. As he goes to bed that night, he is suddenly feverish.

He does not see it as a physical illness. He says, “I have had fevers of many kinds in all sorts of places and circumstances, and I believe I can now tell when their origin is purely physical, and when it is not.” He sees that this particular fever was preparing him for transformation. “For me, one of the most striking things about fevers is their mysterious connection with our sense of time and space. The fever is either the vehicle itself, or evidence of the means by which one is forced from one time context into another.”

It is as if the fever is a herald of the changes that are coming. In his case, his body has traveled faster than his psyche. He needs the fever to slow him down and center him in time, in all times. Before he could begin his great task, he needs to be centered in the now. “All I would suggest is that the future had begun to register a new design in my blood and that the fever marked the beginning of its struggle for awareness.” (p. 105-106)

This is true of many illnesses and fevers that come upon us unexpectedly. Our bodies and our spirits are out of synch and are not living in the same time. Illness and fever, by taking us out of our time and into all times, allow our bodies and our psyches to come together anew for whatever important task lies ahead.

In his book, Venture to the Interior, Van der Post tells us how, while exploring the Nyika plateau in eastern Africa, he wakes one morning feeling severely depressed but without knowing why. Later that day, he realizes that it is the anniversary of a time seven years before, when, as prisoners of war of the Japanese, he and his fellow officers were called to witness two particularly frightening and violent executions. (p. 219)

Reading The Return of the King to Aspen yesterday, I read how Frodo, upon leaving Rivendell, crosses the Ford of Bruinen and is suddenly silent. He seems not to notice his companions or anything around him. Questioned by Gandalf, he answers, “it is my shoulder. The wound aches, and the memory of darkness is heavy on me. It was a year ago today.” It had been exactly a year before when the dark and fell lord of the Ring Wraiths had wounded him upon Weathertop. (p. 268)
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A client of mine became very ill and had to be hospitalized. Later, talking with me, she said that exactly a year before she had been in a serious bus accident in Mexico and had almost died.

My body regularly reminds me of several of my anniversaries. There is March 7th, the anniversary of when I died as a young boy. There is Veteran’s Day, November 11th, when I drove my car off a cliff in the High Sierras. There are the anniversaries of my parents’ deaths.

Sometimes these anniversaries remain hidden from us. As Van der Post says, they don’t always tumble instantly “out in the full light of day.” Sometimes they remain hidden from our conscious minds. However, our bodies always remember.

Anniversaries will not be denied. As Van der Post says, “there is that in our blood which does not forget so easily; our hearts and our deepest minds have a will and a way of their own, and there are anniversaries that they insist upon keeping, no matter what our conscious preoccupations. (p. 219)

In his book, Venture to the Interior, Van der Post tells a very sad story. Exploring the mountain named Mianje, he meets a young couple, living part way up the mountain. They are very much in love, with a baby daughter. They are Europeans, working for the government. The young man Vance volunteers to go with them to explore the mountaintop.

Van der Post, watching the young couple part, rather brusquely and self-consciously, says to himself, “dear God, I do hope nothing is going to happen to make those two children regret their inadequate good-by. (p. 136) Later, watching Vance play a prank on an absent native firewatcher, Van der Post again feels the premonition.

“Something was wrong with our setup, we were off the true somewhere, if we could behave like that.” Shortly after, seeing an eagle and a buzzard fight in midair, he considers it another warning “that greater perils lay ahead.” (p. 141-142)

A dangerous storm comes up, and, not trusting his feelings, Van der Post lets himself be talked into taking another way down the mountain. On the way down, they have to cross a river. Vance volunteers to cross using a rope for security. However, instead of walking across facing the stream as he is advised, he suddenly begins to swim. He almost makes it, but is swept over the falls, and the rope severs on some rocks before Van der Post and the others can pull him out. He is dead, beyond any doubt.
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I have had premonitions. I was walking with my favorite dog Gypsy one day and suddenly felt great anxiety for her. I didn’t know what to make of my feeling. The next day she was dead, hit by a car. I have experienced this feeling of anxiety several times since and have learned to take it very seriously.

These premonitions come from our unconscious, in which all time is one and any event that will generate strong feelings can be felt before its time in the outer world. Our unconscious, ahead of us in time, sees the great loss or shock or whatever else is coming, and tries to warn us – if we will but listen.

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.