21st Century Reality

The Incredible Shrinking Planet

2011-11-29T11:28:00.002-05:00

This is Chapter Eleven of my book, Gideon McGee's Dream, published in 1995. I'm post it here as it relates to our penchant for conspicuous consumption, which drives the economic system of Capitalism.

Chapter Eleven

I've decided to introduce you to the Incredible Shrinking World,” Zack said. “The ISW, as we in the guide business refer to it, may be our most important visit. I saved it until I felt certain about your decision to return to your body, for without your return this lesson would have been wasted. It also comes last on our journey, for unless you absorbed the wisdom imparted by your other experiences, then the ISW would be meaningless to you.”

Gideon felt a sense of pride, not the pride that inflates the ego, but a pride that acknowledges a job well done.

“We will have a guide on this tour,” Zack said. “Her name is Sarah, and she has endeavored for many years to halt the shrinkage of her planet.”

“What's the name of the planet?” Gideon asked.

“The name of this planet is Earth, and on this particular earth the consequences of cause-and-effect are readily apparent to an observer, but not to the inhabitants. Cause and effect, as you are beginning to learn, is a belief and not a truth, although it is your truth.”

“Where is the planet?”

“There's one in every Universe.”

“The Gold Universe has two Earths?” Gideon asked.

“Why not?” Zack replied. “Each Universe has over eighteen billion galaxies. Each galaxy has over one hundred billion stars, and each star has an average of five planets. Do the math. Your universe is no puny thing, just as you are no puny thing.
“How do we get there?”

“Need you ask?” Zack said, arching both white eyebrows.

“Just think ISW, right?”

This trip was instantaneous. There were no light shows, no super novas, and no doors to go through. Gideon was becoming an experienced pilot, but still didn’t realize that he could get to a place he didn’t think he knew because he really did know.
Zack and Gideon found themselves on Madison Avenue in New York City standing on the sidewalk in front of the Gleason Building, home of the world's largest advertising firm. Both wore navy-blue pin-stripped three piece suits, button down collars on white linen shirts, gold cuff-links at their wrists, and diamond studs in their red power ties.

“Everyone looks overweight,” Gideon observed. “And very rich.”
He noticed a beautiful woman dressed in a burgundy suit striding purposefully toward Zack and himself. She was decidedly thinner than the other women on the street. Her hair was the color of spun midnight and her teak-colored eyes gazed directly into his.

“Hello, Gideon,” she said, offering her outstretched hand in greeting. The blackness of her hand stood in stark contrast to Gideon's white. “Zack tells me you're a fast learner. It's too bad I can't say the same for the majority of people on this side of the planet. I'm Sarah.”

“What do you mean by this side of the planet?” Gideon asked, forgetting to return Sarah's greeting.

“The west. You know. The developed side, just as on your Earth.”
Gideon didn't understand her meaning, but figured it would eventually become clear.

“How have you been Zack?” Sarah asked, turning toward the guide and embracing him in a big bear hug. “It's been several lifetimes.”

“Yes it has,” Zack replied, returning Sarah's embrace. He noticed Gideon's puzzled look.

“Do you remember the dream you had about the four desert wanderers?”Zack asked.

“The one where they found the city of gold?”

“That's the one. Sarah is like the fourth wanderer to climb the outer wall of the city.”

“I woke up,” Gideon cut in, “before the fourth wanderer decided whether to follow the others over, or climb back down to show the way to those lost in the desert.”

“Sarah is one of those that climbed back down,” Zack said. "She's known in my parlance as a Seeker, one who is devoted to teaching with the least distortion of truth. When consciousness is about to shift in purpose, people like Sarah come to make others aware that their beliefs create, but are not truths. She comes to teach acceptance and non-judgment.”

“Is she one of those old souls? You know, one that has had many Earth focuses.”

“Enough about me, already,” Sarah said, cutting off Zack’s answer. “Let's get on with what you came here to get on with.”

“Why is everyone so heavy on this planet?” Gideon asked.

“Watch what you say there, young man.” Sarah put her hands on her hips and did a pirouette. “Not everyone here is heavy. The heaviest people are right here in New York City, and Madison Avenue in particular.”

“I don't get it,” Gideon said. “And why is this called the Incredible Shrinking Planet? I don't see anything shrinking. Everyone's big.”

“All these big people don't get it either,” Sarah replied. “You see, Gideon, New York is the economic center of the world, and Madison Avenue is where the people work who find ways to make people like you and I want things we don't need. They make us feel that our happiness is all wrapped up in the acquisition of things, and they get very rich doing it.”

“And fat too, it looks like,” Gideon said.

“As the west consumes more than its share of the Earth's bounty, those in the east wither away. Here,” Sarah said. “Let me show you.”

Sarah placed both hands on Gideon's head. From the right hand he saw a family in the west sitting down to dinner. The table was laden with enough food for ten people eating sensibly, but this was a family of four. There were platters of steaks, mashed potatoes, corn, salads and pies. The four ate to their fill, then threw the leftovers into the garbage.

From Sarah's left hand Gideon saw another family of four sitting on the dirt floor of a thatched hut. On the floor was enough food for one person eating sparingly. It was divided into four equal shares.

Sarah removed her hands. “What did you see?” She asked.

“Two families eating dinner. One had too much, the other too little.”

“Describe the people.”

“One family was rich and overweight, the other poor and malnourished.”
“I'm going to touch you again,” Sarah said. “This time over your heart. I'm going to speed things up dramatically.”

The families were similar in age. The parents were in their thirties, and the children appeared to be around the ages of fourteen and five. The family with the abundant life style lived in a suburban community only a few miles from a sprawling shopping mall, whose contents equaled the gross national product of the small impoverished country of the poor family. The needy family lived on a barren plain with only a few scrub bushes in sight.

Gideon saw the family on the right eating and buying, and eating and buying; using and throwing away, using and throwing away. Years passed in a matter of seconds. While the right-hand family was consuming, the left-hand family was searching, searching for firewood, searching for water, searching for food. While the family on the right was growing fatter, the family on the left grew more and more emaciated. Soon after the scene began, the youngest of the poor family disappeared.
The more the right-hand family consumed, the more the left-hand family suffered. Gideon could not miss the implication.

“Are you showing me that the family on the left doesn't need to starve?” Gideon asked.

“That's exactly what I'm showing you, and the other family doesn’t need to grow fat.” Sarah answered.

“But what can one family do?” Gideon asked. “It would take the whole world to change to make a difference.”

“You’re assuming that there are victims here, Gideon. There are no victims, for all that happens, happens within the intent for which each individual entered their particular life. There is a famous seer named Seth, and this is what he said about victims, You make your own reality – or you do not. And if you do not, then everywhere you are a victim, and the universe must be an accidental mechanism appearing with no reason. So that the miraculous picture you have seen of your body came accidentally into creation, and out of some cosmic accident attained its miraculous complexity. And that body was formed so beautifully for no reason except to be a victim. That is the only other alternative to forming your own reality. You cannot have a universe in between. You have a universe formed with a reason, or a universe formed without a reason. And in a universe of reason, there are no victims. Everything has a reason or nothing has a reason. So – choose your side!

“Change is slow,” Sarah said. “But it starts with the individual. Change takes place one person at a time and the change that takes place for that individual is reality.”

“Come,” Sarah said. “We're going to watch a little TV. But this TV only plays commercials. It's in the Gleason building, just behind us.”

They passed through the gilded glass doors of the fifty story building, and entered an elevator that would take them to the thirteenth floor. They exited into a large waiting room filled with overstuffed chairs and a wall-sized TV screen. In twenty-second segments, ad after ad bombarded the room. Gideon noticed that children, in particular, were targeted by the ads, and he questioned Sarah about it.

“Children are the most impressionable,” Sarah began. “The admen realize that if they can hook one of us early enough they can trick us into believing that what matters most is what we possess. The inner life goes begging. The admen grow consumers. They're gardeners in a sense, but what they grow are the weeds. The weeds choke the flowers. The children grow up believing that happiness is found in things outside of themselves and the belief creates the reality. The ads tell you to be an individual, but theyre making you over in an image of their choosing.”

Gideon watched the TV screen, and in twenty-second sound and vision bites he began to understand what he did not understand on his home planet. Sarah touched his head as he watched, and the TV screen split into halves. On the right was the ad and on the left the effect the ad had on the planet as people bought what it was trying to sell. As he watched, Gideon understood why this was the Incredible Shrinking Planet.
This was a throw-away planet. What they took out of the planet to manufacture their products and create their money was never replaced because they believed that the earth could not replenish quickly enough what they took out. They saw money as their capital. Natural resources that made everything possible were expendable. As the ads whisked by in rapid succession on the right, representing the use of rain forest lumber, fossil fuels, ore of all sorts, water, and topsoil, the planet on the left shrunk perceptibly.

The entire screen changed as Sarah placed her other hand on Gideon's head. He saw beef cattle grazing on the right, and for each one an acre of grain disappeared on the left. As a boy his age wiped his hands on a throwaway paper towel, an old-growth tree from the temperate forests disappeared. As a young boy tried on a new pair of high-tech basketball shoes on the right, landfills rose to the height of mountains on the left. These scenes were repeated over and over until Gideon could stand no more. He brushed Sarah's hands away and the screen returned to its normal mode.

As he was about to speak, in walked the largest man he had ever seen. He was dressed like Gideon and Zack, but with ten times the material. Gideon figured it took five acres of cotton to clothe this one ponderous man. He could feel the floor tremble as the man lumbered over to them.

“Well, Sarah,” the big man said. “I see you're up to no good again. How did you get into my building?” Henry Gleason asked.

“The security guard must have been on a coffee break,” Sarah replied, eyeing the five hundred pounds of Henry Gleason. “I see business is good. You must have gained fifty pounds since I saw you last week.”

“Fifty-five,” Henry Gleason replied in short breaths, but obviously proud of his weight gain. “If business keeps improving I should reach seven hundred by spring. Only the CEO of Goldendeal will weigh more. Who are your two skinny friends?”
“They're just visiting,” Sarah replied.

Henry Gleason looked at Gideon. He knew his age made him a better prospect than Zack. “Can I interest you in anything?” He asked. “A new TV perhaps? You can never have too many TV's.”

Gleason knew the way to ones soul was through TV. It did more to mold beliefs than any other medium.

“I already have one, thanks,” Gideon answered.

“Well, then, how about a bigger one. Bigger is better. Maybe a new bike. One for the roads, one for the mountains, one for racing, one for loafing, one for downhill, one for uphill, one for going right, one for going left. Or, perhaps a car. You can drive here at twelve. We changed the law to increase sales. You can buy one for going short distances, one for long distances, one for on-road, one for off-road, one for snow, one for rain, one for heat, one for cold. We have front wheel drive, rear wheel drive, two-wheel drive, four-wheel drive, and all wheel drive.”

“I can't drive until I'm sixteen,” Gideon said. “And I think I'll just borrow my parent's car.”

Henry Gleason gasped. “Borrow, not Buy? Sinful. Just sinful. How about some new shoes? My company has done wonders for the shoe business. Why, I remember the days when people actually had to get by with one pair of shoes, and, can you believe it, they lasted for years. We changed that belief. Bad for business, that. Now we have shoes for walking, sitting, jumping, and skipping; shoes for grass, sand, rocks, roads, dirt, and ice; shoes for rain, snow, sleet, and shoes for cold and shoes for heat. What will it be? Perhaps one of each? That would be best.”

Gideon thought of the five pair of footwear in his closet at home, and felt a twinge of guilt. “I have enough, thanks,” he said and ducked as one of Henry Gleason's buttons popped off his vest and whistled past his ear like a bullet.

“I must be able to tempt you with something?” Henry Gleason said, his frustration increasing. “I know. How about some CDs. We have CDs for every kind of taste, and all sorts of machines to play them on. We have walk-man, jump-man, run-man, and jog-man. We have sit-man, stand-man, sleep-man and doze-man. You name it. We have it. And the best part is that you just throw the CDs away when your tastes change. We discourage trading.”

“Don't you have radio?” Gideon asked.

“We haven't had radio for fifty years,” Henry Gleason said proudly. “My father was responsible for that. He figured it cut down on all kinds of sales. The advertising wasn't so great on radio anyway. Dad discovered we could sell more for our clients if we got rid of radio altogether. My father gained two hundred and thirty-three pounds from that discovery. Now, instead of the music industry getting free advertising every time a radio station played their music, they pay us to advertise, and nobody gets their product for free. Great idea, huh, kid?”

“How do people who can't afford a CD player get to hear music?” Gideon asked.

“Not my problem, kiddo. Not my problem. My grandfather always said, 'money talks, B.S. walks'. Good man my Grandad. Died at four hundred and eighty-three and three quarter pounds. Started this company, he did.

“Look, it's obvious you're not here to buy or to enlist Gleason's help in selling a product. I don't want any potential customers seeing skinny people like you hanging around. Sarah,” Henry Gleason barked. “Get yourself and your light-weight friends out of my building before I call security.”

“My pleasure, Henry,” Sarah said. “We got what we came for. You better sit down. You're sweating all over your new suit.”

“Plenty more where this came from,” Henry Gleason replied. “Why, I have suits for hot, suits for cold, suits for driving, suits for flying, suits for high humidity, suits for low humidity...”

Sarah, Zack and Gideon didn't wait for Henry Gleason to finish. They had seen and heard enough. Gideon, was first out of the Gleason Building door and gulped-in the air. He had a sense of suffocating while inside.

“How can you stand it here, Sarah?” Gideon asked. He loosened his tie and threw the diamond tie-tack into the street. A smartly dressed gentleman dove into the gutter after it, and as he grabbed the diamond the button on his waistband popped off.

“Is it much different here than on your Earth?” Sarah asked. “It's all a matter of degree and it’s all based on your beliefs.”

“I don't think I'll ever buy another thing when I get back,” Gideon swore.

“You will,' Sarah replied. “But with more awareness of the impact your purchase has on the rest of the planet. Over consumption is not right or wrong, but the beliefs behind it carry consequences.”

“I don't think I need to go east,” Gideon said. “The point was well enough made right here in the west.”

“It's up to you, Gideon,” Sarah said. “You know, I think you're going to climb back down the outer wall of the city of Gold.”

“It's not going to be easy, my going back. Is it?”

“There's much yet to remember, Gideon,” Zack said, making a point not to use the word ‘learn.’. “And you'll remember it on your Earth. It won't be easy, for you have planned a big life for yourself. You staged the Round Pond episode to jump-start yourself.”

“What do you mean, 'I staged it'?” Gideon asked.

“That's another story for another time. Just remember, you are essence. You are powerful. You are no better. You are no worse. You simply are. Are you ready to go back?”

“More ready than ever before. Let's go.”

In the flash of a thought Gideon and Zacharaias were back in Norwich, Connecticut, hovering above the hole in the ice of Round Pond.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter One

2010-04-12T06:39:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since my last post, as I've been busy creating my new book, The Frog Handled Mug. I'm in the maddening midst of trying to get an agent to take a look at it, but since I write to share what I write I'm going to post the entire book here. Each post will be a new chapter and I would appreciate any and all feedback, including referrals to any agent or publisher you may know. So, here we Go.

The Frog Handled Mug

Chapter One

He is me, but not me. Tall and blonde he sits at the kitchen table sipping coffee from a frog handled mug. The coffee is bitter without sugar. I can taste it. How I know I can’t tell you. He is thirty-six and married to a dark haired woman with brown eyes and killer legs. I’m a leg man myself, preferring a well turned calf over all those other features that usually turn a man’s head. Most of my male patients do not share my preference for the female leg. Sure, they like good legs, but their preferences lay further north.

A few pieces of snail mail are on the table, and unlike my mail there are no bills and no junk. Maybe they came yesterday or are coming tomorrow. His name and address are on the top letter, David Cawley, 121 Briarwood Rd, Norwich, CT 06360. There are no stamps or postal cancellation marks on any of his mail. That’s odd. It is summer there, as the large maple outside his kitchen window is ripe with dark green leaves. I can hear the birds greeting the morning sun. The ground was covered with snow when I went to bed at 11pm, 2009, ten stories up in a Manhattan high rise. David turns in his chair to check the date on the calendar. It is August 24th, 2075. He has one of those rip-off-the-page calendars where the only date showing is the current date. David is religious about ripping off the pages. Why, I don’t know. I just know that he is.

If David Cawley is thirty-six and the year is 2075, then he was born in 2039, a good 94 years after I was born. How can he be me? Hell, he won’t even be born for another thirty years, and by then I’ll be long gone… maybe. Ninety-four isn’t out of the realm of possibilities. Why do I feel so certain that David Cawley is me, and not just symbolically me? How could I possibly have a dream of me in a time that is sixty-six years in the future? Hell, the future doesn’t exist yet.

David gets up from the kitchen table, his cotton bathrobe untied at the waist, and shuffles his six foot frame into the bathroom. He peers into the mirror and rubs his morning stubble. Being him I know he is not going to shave. David never shaves on the weekends and the stubble is only a day old, practically nothing for someone with Scandinavian genes. My beard, on the other hand, is dark and thick and requires daily removal lest I look like a bum. I am a professional after all, and have an image to maintain. I never liked Freud’s stubbled face. There are too many Freud look-a-likes in my profession.

Julia, David’s wife, clad in men’s boxers and a T-shirt that had SHIFTED 2069 printed on each short sleeve, walks into the bathroom. She rubs the sleep from her eyes and says, “Did you make contact?”

“Yes,” he said, “he’s watching us as we speak. He thinks it’s a dream.”
Julia wraps her tanned arms around David’s waist. “Does he know you’re him and he’s you?”

“He gets it at a gut level, but he can’t wrap his mind around it yet. Augusto’s too much a product of his time, and he’s too stuck in his profession’s dogma. He’ll come around though.”

“He has no idea about the part he’s to play in all this, does he?”
David smiles into the mirror. “It’s a tough time for all of them. The three years starting in 2008 was not a pleasant time. Emotions were being tweaked like they had never been tweaked before. Every emotion was intensified. Augusto’s office phone is ringing off the hook and he’s feeling overwhelmed. His theories, that worked for so long, no longer work.”

“Brave man,” Julia said.

“I wasn’t feeling brave in 2009. I was confused, freaked out.” David turns and bends down to give Julia a kiss on her forehead. “I think Augusto, has had enough for one night’s dream.”

On the wall behind him is a picture of a deer, a five point buck that is reflected in the mirror along with David’s head. He turns back to the mirror and as though looking directly into my eyes said, “What do you believe, Augusto?” David Cawley takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and disappears from my dream.

Over the 30 years I have practiced psychotherapy my patients have regaled me with their dreams. I humored them when they told me that the person in their dream was them, but not them. After all, they were a bit off center, if you know what I mean, and I never experienced a dream like theirs. Sure, symbolically all aspects of a dream in one way or another represent the dreamer. But, David Cawley IS me, Dr. Augusto DeRosa, psychotherapist extrodinaire. I am as sure of it as a schizophrenic is of talking to little green men. My patients had described lucid dreaming - being consciously awake within the dream - and I had read much about it in the literature, but this was my first experience with it. I must say, the experience far surpasses the description, but then that always seems to be the case. My body awoke directly after the dream. It is 6am. I say my body awoke because my mind is fully engaged. This damn dream challenges everything I believe about consciousness. It unsettles me. I am not easily unsettled.

It is just a dream, though, isn’t it? Sure, as a psychotherapist I believe dreams hold meaning, but the meaning is symbolic. What do I believe? David Cawley wouldn’t have asked me that question if the question itself had no significance. I feel the significance. I sit up and turn on the light. The sun should be up in about twenty minutes. I smell the coffee wafting in from the kitchen. I love those auto-timers. There is a chill in the room, but I like it cool when I sleep. I don’t like it when I wake up. I put on my robe and walk into the kitchen where it is warmer. Maybe I’ll skip my run this morning and exercise my mind on line. Tynedale’s appointment isn’t until 10am. That leaves plenty of time to check out a few things and make it to my office for my first appointment.

Chuck Tynedale is a classic obsessive compulsive. Nice guy, but a pain in the ass. Always shows up twenty minutes early and insists on the first appointment of the day, which means I have to open up earlier than I would like. Why do I do that? What do I believe? I believe it is the right thing to do for this particular patient.

I pour a cup of coffee, lighten it up, and dump in a teaspoon of sugar. How could David Cawley take it black? Too bitter. I like his cup, though. Maybe I’ll get one like it. Frogs are symbolic of many things. I walk to my front door and get the Times… Damn, Obama’s sending more troops. What a quagmire this is going to be. Another Nam. Felt like the hottest place on earth when I was there. More rain than a fish could tolerate. It was bad timing for me, being there for the Tet offensive.

I take care of some early morning business and spend the next two hours online trying to figure out what happened last night. First on the list was a symbol search…frogs, cups, summer, legs, mirrors…and…that picture of a five point buck that hung on the wall in David’s bathroom. I barely noticed it. Not much connects except for the frog. Every culture seems to have its own symbolism. Metamorphosis seems to be a hit, though. I mean, I’m not feeling any great change in my life, but I get a little tweak when I read it. I pay attention to emotional tweaks. Change would be welcome at this point in my rut of a life. No wife, no kids, one sister a hundred miles away in Connecticut, a drug addicted nephew and a girldfriend I’m not in love with. All I really have is my practice and my professorship at Columbia. I look at my clock, a horrible art deco thing. It’s time to meet my OCD.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Two

2010-04-12T06:38:00.001-05:00

It is 9:40am. Tynedale is ten seconds late according to my cell phone clock. He is a middle aged accountant, dumpy in his mid section and soft at the extremities, but he is highly sought after for his skill with numbers. Two marriages ended in divorce. No surprise there. Fortunately for the kids, he didn’t have any. The knock comes at 9:40 and twenty seconds.

“You’re early, but late,” I said, forcing a smile which I half felt.

“I know,” he said. “The cabbie was more interested in talking than in getting me here. He missed a green light. Stopped at the yellow just so he could ask me about his tax return. I didn’t tip the asshole. I figured my advice was worth ten times what I would have tipped him.”

I actually like Tynedale, or rather I like his manner of speech. “Since you’re here we might as well get started.” Nothing changes. We mosey into the inner sanctum where he takes his usual place on the leather sofa in front of my desk. He wipes it off with one of those hand sanitizers before sitting then places the cloth in a plastic baggie.

“I went to the movies last night,” he begins. “I wouldn’t have gone to the shit hole, but I wanted to see this movie on the big screen.”

“What was it?” I asked, curious about the movie that lured him into what he considered a festering cesspool of contagion.

“2012, the Armageddon movie. Something’s going on. I can feel it. The world is falling apart. I’m falling apart.”

“The title of the movie refers to the Mayan calendar, Chuck.”

“Screw the Mayans,” he said. “I know what I feel and I don’t know anything about the Mayan calendar. We’re heading for Armageddon.”

“It seems like it, doesn’t it? December 21st, 2012 is when the Mayan's Long Count calendar marks the end of a 5,126-year era. The Maya were hoping to celebrate the end of a whole cycle, but never made it. It’s all about the stars, Chuck. On the winter solstice in 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in about 26,000 years. From what I’ve read the energy that typically streams to Earth from the center of the Milky Way will be partially disrupted on that date. What that means for us I don’t know, but our astronomers don’t seemed worried.”

Chuck Tynedale straightens his black tie which didn’t need straightening and uncrosses his legs, placing his right foot exactly parallel to his left. He looks to make sure.

“How do you know all this? You’re a shrink,” he said.

“I’m a religious reader of the Times….front to back. So, how did you like the movie?”

“It sucked. All I got from it was a runny nose. I probably picked up that god damned pig flu. Doesn’t anyone cover their mouths when they sneeze? I’m thinking of moving to Japan.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“They all wear those white face masks. I admire them for their cleanliness. I first found out about it from Clavell’s Shogun. I think I was Japanese once or twice.”
Chuck believes in reincarnation, and attributes his OCD to a life he had in London during the plague in 1665. He was one of the body removers who hauled the dead to the burying pits. He eventually succumbed to the disease. At least that’s what he thinks. I’ve been trying to connect him to the here and now for three years. Hey, he’s going to the movies and that’s a big improvement over how he was when he first came to me. Well, he didn’t really come to me. I had to go to him. The only way he’d let me in was on the condition that I wear one of those face masks he so admires the Japanese for. One of his clients, a friend of mine, begged me to see him. My buddy is claustrophobic and hated those face masks. He moved to San Diego a week before we were to begin therapy.

Chuck rambles on about the Japanese and germs, and finishes up by bashing the London culture of the 1600’s for his current blockages. Chuck is into blaming, a classic victim. But, going back in time to an imaginary life to find a cause for what is happening now seems counterproductive. Sure, someone runs a red light and sends you to the hospital then you’re a victim. No control there. As Nascar fans like to say, Shit Happens. Get over it and drop the blame. It keeps you stuck in the past. At least Chuck’s going to the movies and proving my value to him. He obviously thinks I’m worth the hundred fifty an hour or he would have stopped seeing me. Who knows?

Tynedale looks at his digital watch that he had perfectly synchronized with his cell phone clock and stops talking mid-sentence. It is 10:45 and his time is up. He walks out without a word, following a pattern that he either would not or could not break. Christ! How did he get two women to marry him? I guess there is some truth to the saying, “there is someone for everyone.” In his case there were two someones. I’d love to get into their heads. It is Saturday in David Cawley’s world, but it is Monday in mine. I lock the office and head to Columbia for my intro to psych class. Teaching freshmen is a trip in itself. It’s December and the last week before finals. By this time my students think they have the know-how to solve the puzzle of their friends’ minds. It makes me laugh. The course content is at least a decade old and mostly bullshit. Changing the minds of the curriculum committee is about as easy as sucking an egg through a pin hole in the shell. It’s not worth the effort.

Without the brain there is no consciousness. That is what they are taught and therefore that is what they believe. I believe it, too. Midway through the course one of the more creative student thinkers brought up a clever hypothetical. What if, he said, an alien landed in your living room while you were watching TV? To him it appears that the set is producing the image. To test his theory he cuts a wire and the set goes blank. He splices the wire back together and the set begins producing the image again. Now, we know, he continued, that the images are actually produced outside the set and that the set is merely a conduit of the images sent from elsewhere. If a component fails you encounter a problem with the image or the sound. Who’s to say that our brains aren’t like our TV, not the originator, but the conduit.

All I could say was that science has yet to discover a signal source outside the brain. Until that time we’re going with what we know. He raised his hand again and asked if we’re looking for that source. I knew that there was a fringe element of my profession that believed this kind of stuff, but science is as dogmatic as any religion. I told him his inquiry was outside the scope of psych 101 and to research it if he’s interested. An artful dodge, I thought. But after the previous night’s dream, or whatever it was, the kid’s question just popped into my mind. I don’t know his name, but I see him sitting in the third row center, his usual spot. I ask him to see me after class.

I cut the class fifteen minutes short so that the kid and I would have some time to chat. I look up his name. Alexander Hastings.

“Did you ever research that question you posed to me several weeks ago?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” he said, his voice high pitched and cracking. I see he is trying to grow a mustache and goatee. It is nothing more than peach fuzz. Physically he is more like sixteen than eighteen.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Uhmm, Sixteen, Sir. I finished highschool in two and a half years. I have a pretty high IQ I’m told.”

“What prompted your question about the brain being a conduit of consciousness? It was cleverly put.”

“A couple of things, actually, Sir. Two nights before I asked the question I saw myself sleeping in my bed. It sort of freaked me out. I thought I was dead or something. I was just awake though, while my body was asleep. I was able to go wherever I wanted just by thinking of where I wanted to go. So I did an experiment. I found the nearest trash can and looked inside at its contents. I excluded all the things that could appear in any dorm trashcan like cans, candy wrappers, stuff like that. I saw on the top a paper on sociology that had a big red F on it. I read the cover sheet then went back to my room and just hopped into my body, and that was it. The next day I woke up early and found the trashcan and sure enough that same paper was there.”

“Maybe you were sleep walking,” I said.

“Nope. My roommate was up all night doing a paper. I asked him if I got up during the night. He said, no. So I figured that either the brain projected its consciousness out of itself or that the brain was merely a conduit of consciousness. Either way it seemed pretty revolutionary to me. I’ve read-up on this and it happens to many people, and yet I was not able to find any investigation in any of the refereed journals. There are many ideas like this outside mainstream thinking, but none within it other than opinion pieces debunking it all as merely anecdotal. I don’t know. It just seemed to me that if people have experienced it then it must be real.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “Have you read A Beautiful Mind? John Nash believed that all of his schizophrenic experiences were real. He literally saw people that didn’t exist.”

“They didn’t exist in our experience,” the kid said. He is smart and not the least bit cowed by my Ph.D. “My mother’s a psychic and her experiences are very different than what your profession has described as possible. Try telling her that what she sees and hears is not real.”

I find myself partially agreeing with this young heretic, but can’t bring myself to tell him that. Instead I said, “I wouldn’t dream of it, Alex. There is much we don’t know. Who knows, maybe you’ll be the one to discover it. Do you plan to major in psychology? You seem to have a knack for it.”

“No, sir. It’s just a fun thing for me. I’m majoring in quantum mechanics. I’m most interested in time and what it really is.”

I think I’m in over my head, here. I thank Alexander Hastings and wish him luck on his final. He doesn’t need it, but I think I need him.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Three

2010-04-12T06:36:00.000-05:00

What do I believe? Damned if I know. The sun rises in the east. Is that a belief? It seems more like fact to me. The subway platform is sparsely populated at this time of day, what with most riders at work. Mostly students, hooked up to their mp3 players, stand motionless next to me. I never quite got how anyone could just stand mannequin-like as a great rock tune blasted their senses. I mean, why listen if it doesn’t move you. There’s a belief. It’s also a judgment. Rock and roll should move you physically and if it doesn’t there’s something wrong with you. Hmm, I didn’t know I had that one. A few other elders and I hear the train approaching just seconds before the ear budded students. For some reason I feel a certain pride in that.

I think about Alexander Hastings and his precociousness. I wonder if he will leave his mark on the world. So few of those kid geniuses do. I step into the car and facing me above the window is an ad for a documentary. It is three years old. Many others are older than that. It said, “What do you Believe.” It was a film appearing at the 2006 Staten Island Film Festival. I’m not kidding. It really said that. You can’t make up something like that. What the hell is going on? I’ve ridden this subway hundreds of times since 2006 and I swear that ad was not there before. Well, it might have been there…maybe I never noticed before. That’s my rational take on it, but I like coincidences. I never attached any meaning to them, but that didn’t stop me from appreciating them. Placing meaning would be anathema to a rational mind like my own. I ask the rider next to me if she had seen that ad before.

“No,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned it’s a waste of the advertiser’s money. I’ll look at them, but just the pictures.”

“Thanks,” I said and turn away from her. I’m not interested in a conversation about the merits of subway advertising. What do I believe? I believe this subway train will get me to my destination safely. How’s that for a belief, Mr. Cawley. I believe it, but do I know it? I don’t know it one hundred percent, but I never fret over whether it will get me to where I’m going each time I step aboard. I guess it’s a matter of trust. This is pointless bullshit. Why am I bothering with this? I think I’ll go for a run in Central Park when I get home. I live at the Eldorado, located at Central Park West, so it’s no big deal to skip across the street to the park. I’ve been a runner for over fifty years. For me it’s a meditation, and a meditation might be just the ticket right now.

When I get home I change quickly into my running gear. I have a dinner date with my girlfriend of two years. Debra is an inch taller than me, a legitimate catch for a short guy like me. She’s a genuine 9, a blue eyed brunette with killer legs. She is also twenty years younger than me. A twenty year difference I can deal with. Anything greater makes me uncomfortable. I look ten years younger than my age and act and feel twenty years younger. In my mind that makes Debra and I equal. She looks and acts her age. Does that make me shallow? Maybe, but that’s me. I think I just bumped up against another belief. Oh! Here’s another one. If Debra was more than two inches taller than me I wouldn’t have dated her. Why? Because we’d stand out, and not in the way I like to stand out. I always thought Mutt looked silly standing next to Jeff. That’s for those of you old enough to remember who Mutt and Jeff are.

Taking an elevator to go running strikes me as wimpy. I suppose it is a feeling I easily live with as I never take the stairs. I’m a decent runner. I have a shelf of age-group trophies. I don’t display any seconds or thirds, just firsts. What does that say about me? Shit! Maybe I’m shallower than I thought. I’m beginning to sound like Jimmy Lewis, a patient of mine. He’s as shallow as a tidal pool. What’s going on? Until last night I never entertained thoughts like these. Screw you David Cawley…even if you are me…which I really don’t believe.

It’s colder than I thought. Ever since a nasty experience with bad dick-freeze I do not challenge the cold unless properly bundled in the necessary place. There’s another belief. Proper bundling prevents frost bite of particularly sensitive body parts. Or, is that a fact? So far I haven’t learned a thing from my beliefs other than I believe them. This is uncomfortable….the cold, that is.

I cut my run from four to three miles and head back to the Eldorado. What a pretentious name. It works for a mythical city of gold, but not for a high rise apartment building, no matter how art deco it is. I give my street address to those who ask, even though most New Yorkers would more easily recognize the name, Eldorado. “Where do you live?” “Oh, I live at the Eldorado!” Come on!

I avoid the stairs. Actually it is less an avoidance than it is never even a consideration. How do you avoid something that doesn’t enter your consciousness as a choice. Debra believes that to keep her waiting is tantamount to treason, a great betrayal of trust. When it comes to bowing to this particular belief of Debra’s I have no problem stepping into Chuck Tynedale’s obsessive compulsive shoes. And besides, it’s no big deal for me being on time. What is a big deal is being late. I hate being late. Why is that? Maybe it’s because I believe that being late when being late is avoidable is rude. There’s another belief. Are beliefs truths? Mine seem like they are.

It’s strange, now that I think about it. My belief is only about me. That is to say there are millions of people who are always late. You know who they are. There are also entire cultures, Tynedale’s Japan for one, that to be on-time for a social event is a sign of rudeness. Hmmm. Maybe I don’t have to get so wigged out when I’m about to be late. Being on time isn’t a cosmic law. It’s just my law, and not even a law. Sure seems like one, though. I guess I turn my beliefs into laws…Augusto’s Law. I like the sound of that.

I meet Debra on time at Mama Leone’s, a tourist must-see, but their great spaghetti makes up for it. I look a lot like that guy who played Gandhi in the movie. What’s his name? Oh Yea, Ben Kingsley. So I get a lot of stares from the tourists. I’m occasionally asked for an autograph. Sometimes I sign Ben Kinsley, sometimes Augusto DeRosa. When I sign my own name the yahoos invariably ask if I’m famous. A simple yes is enough for them. I wonder if they Google me when they get back to their hotels. They would find me since I’ve written a couple psych books, but they would be disappointed at the miniscule scope of my fame. The good thing about being a writer is that even the famous ones go unrecognized. If I didn’t look like Kingsley I’d be invisible.

Anyway, I don’t invite Debra home with me because to be honest, I was more interested in sleeping with David Cawley. She doesn’t seem that interested anyway. Maybe she has a headache. I am excited about going to bed, which is different than looking forward to going to bed. It feels a little like how I feel the moment before the Rolling Stones walk onto the stage. I haven’t missed a single US Stones concert in thirty years. At the San Francisco concert in the 70’s I bought a Forty Licks baseball cap that I still wear around Columbia. Even young people know who the Stones are. The same can’t be said for the Four Tops.

Sleep doesn’t come easily. You can’t force sleep any more than you can force a bulldog to learn anything. But, it does come and so does David Cawley. This time he sports a mustache and walks arm in arm with a tall blonde woman along a shopping mall promenade. They amble into a ceramic store, no different than one you’d see today. They walk to the mug section where he selects the same dark green frog handled mug that I saw him sipping from in my last dream. Maybe he broke the one I saw in my last dream. The odd thing is that he just walked out with it. In fact, there are others there that leave the store with the old five finger discount. No one pays for anything. I feel no anxiety in David Cawley’s body. I can come up with no rational explanation for the behavior, a mall full of thieves.

In the next moment the scene changes. David and the blond are back home. It is their home and I recognize the location from my many visits to my sister’s place in Storrs, Connecticut. It is the same David Cawley, but not the same. Some things are difficult to explain and this is one of them. The woman is definitely his wife as I could see their wedding picture in the living room. What happened to Julia? I leave and cruise around the house. I stop short at a picture that sits on a credenza with several other framed 5x7’s. In one of the photos is David arm and arm with Julia on his left and what’s-her-name on his right. He obviously knows them both, but where …what happened to Julia. As in last night’s dream I know that David is thirty-six in this scene. I also know he’s not a Mormon. Didn’t they give up polygamy in the late 1800’s?

Unlike the David Cawley in Norwich this David seems unaware of me, and yet, again, I know he is me. David washes his new mug and pours a cup of coffee. I decide to try and find a mug like it. The scene grows hazy and then fades completely, only to be replaced by David Cawley in his Norwich home. This David is aware of me observing. In fact, I sense he invited me to observe. I cruise around his home. In the bedroom on one of the dressers is the exact same picture I saw in the Storrs home. And when I say exact that’s what I mean. The three of them look to be in their early twenties. How could he marry both women? I move back to the living room where David sits reading. I look at the book. Breaking Addictions by Augusto DeRosa Ph.D. It was my first book, published in 1995. It made me a lot of money because there were a lot of addicts, and for every addict there was at least a mother and a father and sometimes a wife and sometimes a husband. Drug addiction, especially among young people was rampant in 1995 and even worse in 2009. I guess my book didn’t help much.

Julia walks into the living room that is lined with ceiling to floor windows. There is a large scotch pine out front that has several inactive bird feeders dangling from its lower branches. A red humming bird feeder is filled with a water and sugar mix. The Cawleys live in the woods and so there is no need to fill the other feeders during the warmer months. Two Siamese cats lay at the base of the tree hoping for a speedy return of the cold. They look bored, but maybe it is just me anthropomorphizing them. I do that a lot with animals. Julia looks at the cats and walks to the bedroom.

David Cawley closes my book and tosses it into a wastebasket sitting next to his recliner. On the maple side-table is another book. Addiction as Choice by… me. Impossible. David Cawley picks up the book and turns to the copyright page…2011.
“Julia,” he calls. “Could you come here for a minute?”

“I’m busy,” she said. “Since you’re the one with something on your mind, why don’t you come to me? I’m in the bedroom.”

The woman knows her mind, I thought.

David Cawley hoists his trim body out of the recliner and walks to the bedroom. “Is Christine bringing Bill to the dinner this evening?”

“No,” Julia replies “They couldn’t find a sitter so Bill’s got the duty. Why do you ask?”

“I wanted run some of my project notes by him. I guess it can wait.”

“Is that the project on your Augusto focus?”

Why is David Cawley referring to me as a project? And what is a focus? Their conversation turns to small talk, a form of banter that I avoid more than thumb screws. I fast-forward several hours to their dinner party. To my amazement and the further destruction of my rational mind I discover that Christine was the same woman that was married to the Storrs David Cawley. It is clear that Julia and Christine are best of friends and that their friendship goes back to their childhoods. So, why is one David married to Julia and a second David married to Christine? This in itself is a conundrum, but a bigger one is where was David and Christine while I was observing David and Julia? There are two of each of them… so far.

I feel like Alice must have felt when she dropped through the rabbit hole. It all challenges my understanding of reality. Each present moment is all there is. I believe that. And I believe that the future can only be impacted by the present moment, but it is a future that I can never arrive at because I am always residing in present moments. And yet… and yet here I am observing the future in my dream. It’s more than a dream. It’s more a visitation, no different than visiting Spain or Egypt except my body is missing.

A few hours pass. An old man, early eighties maybe, enters the house to the delight of those assembled to honor him. He looks vaguely familiar, but I cannot place the face. He wears a hearing aid in each ear and the guests are careful to speak directly to him. At the dinner table David Cawley stands and hoists his wine glass in a toast.

“To Alexander Hastings, the University of Connecticut’s first Nobel Prize winner. Happy 82nd birthday, Professor.”

“Thank you Professor Cawley…David. It’s been a tumultuous journey, but worth the bumps…always worth the bumps as you all know. I owe much to David’s past focus, Augusto, and to you Professor Cawley. You have been instrumental in all of this. Am I to understand that Augusto is watching as I speak?”

“That’s correct, Dr. Hastings,” David Cawley replied.

“Then I shall proceed and address Augusto directly.”

Alexander Hastings’s voice is unlike what one might expect from an old man of eighty-two. His voice and body carriage suggests he could squeeze out at least another twenty years. You never know, though, when your ticket will be punched.

Professor Hastings holds his left hand up to his ear as one does when suggesting someone call them. “There is much to be done,” he said into his pinkie. “I suggest you call me tomorrow.”

That’s all he says! I am so deflated that I immediately awaken from my dream, or whatever it is. I make a note to call Alexander Hastings lest I forget my dream when I wake up in the morning. I couldn’t possibly make this shit up. I fall back into a stage four delta wave sleep. That’s the deepest level of sleep for you non-psychologist types.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Four

2010-04-12T06:35:00.000-05:00

Hundreds of hand crafted mugs line the shelves. This could take some time. I hate doing it, but I ask for help. It’s a guy thing. The clerk walks me to the location where two styles of frog mugs lay hidden behind horse mugs and hippo mugs. I’m not kidding…hippo mugs. There are two different frog mugs and…surprise, surprise…one of them is an exact replica of the mug in my dream. I’m beginning to expect the unexpected and the unexplainable. Fifteen bucks seems excessive when David Cawley number two didn’t drop a dime for his. Mug in tow I head for Columbia and my meeting with Alexander Hastings. The kid actually sounded excited that I wanted to meet with him. What was that about?

Alexander doesn’t share my belief about punctuality. He is fifteen minutes late and doesn’t apologize, doesn’t even seem to recognize that he is late. His back pack is full and looks heavier than he can handle. I wonder if my dream was accurate about him winning the Nobel Prize. He said he was interested in time. The boy genius doesn’t wait for my invitation and plops himself onto the Queen Ann beside the sofa.

“Does anyone in your family have hearing loss?” I asked. He shoots me a puzzled look.

“Yes,” he said. “How did you know?”

“I had a dream about you last night. You were wearing hearing aids. Looks like you’re going to catch a dose of whats and huhs, but not for a while.”

“That sucks,” he said. “I put a lot of stock in dreams, my mom being a psychic and all.”

“You still interested in time?”

“Sure, why wouldn’t I be? It’s only been two days since I saw you last. Why do you ask?”

He’s a cute kid, and subtracting the shrinkage that occurs in an eighty-two year old I figure he has another four inches of growth he’d be adding to his five feet, eight inches. “Why are you interested in time?” I asked.

“Because of my mom. She’s able to see the future and is right about 80% of the time. That intrigued me, although it doesn’t seem to intrigue the scientific community.”

“What about it intrigues you?”

He takes his twenty-pound back pack off his lap and drops it on the floor. It hits with a thump. He looks like a five year old waiting for a candy bar that is about to be placed in his hand. Young Mr. Hastings leans forward and clasps his hands on top of my desk.

“This is the thing,” he says. “The future doesn’t exist, or so we’re taught. If that’s the case then how can my mother see it? The odds of her guessing correctly eighty percent of the time is ridiculously high. Do the math.”

“No thanks,” I said, as though I just didn’t want to rather than I had no idea how to.

“OK. My thinking is this. It makes more sense that my mother is seeing something that exists than it does that she is an exceptional guesser. That suggests to me that our concept of time and probably of reality itself is a bit cockeyed. I want to find out what it is about time that allows some folks to see the future and others to experience the past. It’s as simple as that. I’m surprised no one thought of it before.”

Simple! You’ve got to be kidding me, kid.

“Are you talking about flashbacks?” I ask. “Because if you are, that can easily be explained by psychology.”

“No. I’m referring to past life regressions. Have you read any of the studies on it? No matter. It makes no sense to me that they are merely genetic memories. They’re way too detailed. It makes more sense to me that they are time bleed-throughs.”

Christ! The kid’s sixteen. But, then, maybe that’s why he is so able to think outside the box. He hasn’t received as heavy a dose of dogma as I obviously have. Time bleed-throughs! I’ll bet the little egghead eventually proves it. Didn’t Cawley say he won the Nobel for his studies in time, or did he say his theories about time? There’s a difference.

“Why does it make more sense that they are time bleed-throughs?” I asked.

“Because of my mother’s ability to see the future. That can’t be a genetic memory. How can you have a memory of something that supposedly hasn’t happened yet? I think my mother’s psychic ability and her past life regression experiences are exactly the same. In some way all time exists at once. Past lives exist now, just as the future exists now. They aren’t memories or great guesses and I’m going to prove it.”

“How would you explain that your mother is wrong 20% of the time? Many psychics are wrong far more often than your mother.”

The kid smiles at me like a father smiles at his son when he first gets simple addition. One plus one equals two. That’s great, Augusto. What a good boy. All the while he knows it is a moon shot away from trigonometry.

“That cell phone on your desk is the direct result of what science has learned about quantum mechanics. I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I’m sure you already knew that.”

He ignored my meek nod and continued.

“It’s simple, really. Everything exists as a probability. Nothing has a certainty of one. So my mom is seeing the future of one of her clients, but in one particular future moment she makes a different choice than the one she made when my mother read her future. That one different choice lays out a different set of probabilities and the future is altered. Nothing is set. See?”

I do see, but I want to change the direction of his conversation.

“What do you think of two futures existing side by side?” I asked.

“Oh, that,” he said as if he was telling a child that his discovery that the sun always rises in the east is old news. “Hugh Everett first posed his multiple universe theory in the 1950s as an answer to Schrödinger’s cat in the box thought experiment. You know about that, right?”

“Sure,” I said, while making a mental note to look up Schrödinger and Everett.

“Anyway, they’ve gone way beyond Everett. I think membrane theory is the most recent.”

“Right,” I said. “The reason I asked is because of some recent dreams I’ve had. I’m in the future, 2075 to be exact, and I switch back and forth between two identical mes that apparently live two different lives. The weird thing is that at one point I think they were one and the same. Both of them had the same picture in their home of a much earlier time in their lives. Any ideas.”

“It sounds like taking both the high road and the low road,” he said. “My mother used to sing that song to me when I was little. You know, ‘Oh ye’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road and I’ll be in Scotland afore ye.’ Maybe in your dream when you came to the fork in the road you took both the high and low roads. That way you get to experience both.”

“Is there anything you don’t know or have an idea about,” I asked. I want to tell him how impressed I am with him, but instead I got sarcastic. I don’t like it when I do that, and I do it too often.

“So you’re saying that maybe at some point I had to decide between one woman and another and I split off and got both, one in one world and one in another.”

The kid shrugs his shoulders. “Maybe, I don’t know, but it’s an intriguing idea, don’t you think? It would be cool if I also attended Harvard in another universe. It was a tough choice between Columbia and Harvard.”

“Why did you choose Columbia?”

Alexander Hastings laughs. He has a fun and hearty laugh, not one of those fake ‘ha ha’s’ I hear from students trying to humor me. I hate being humored. Why is that?

“Wouldn’t it be funny if I was also at Harvard and someone asked me the same question? And how would I know that this me that is talking to you is the split-off-me. To me I’m just as real as the me that is going to Harvard probably feels. Neither one of us knows the other exists. And geeze.”

GEEZE?

“How often do you create a split? It wouldn’t make much sense to create a split-off just trying to decide between chocolate or vanilla ice cream.”

As he is talking to me a mind blowing thought flies into my mind. Ever wonder how that happens? Do you think that simple brain chemistry can create that? Anyway, I said to him, “What about all the other people that populate each world… I mean the mechanics of it boggles the mind, my mind. If I split and split and split then so does everyone else. The rules have to apply to everyone. Don’t you think? That makes for an awful lot of worlds, all with their own stars and galaxies.”

“The membrane theory postulates infinite universes,” he said.

I really can’t take any more. No kidding, I can’t. My head is beginning to feel like one big aneurism ready to pop.

“Are you going home for the semester break?” I asked.

“Yep. I wouldn’t miss it.”

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“Norwich, Connecticut. It’s in the southeastern part of the state at the head of the Thames River. It’s close to the casinos.”

Right, of course, what else. “Do you think I could visit? My sister lives in Storrs and I’ll be going up for Christmas for a few days. I’d like to talk to your mother as well. What do you think?” I do not tell him that a future me also lives in Norwich.

“It’s fine with me. I’m sure it will be OK with mom, but I’ll give her a call and let you know before I leave for the break. This was cool.”

“Yeah, right, cool.” He thinks it is cool and my head is exploding. What next?

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Five

2010-04-12T06:34:00.000-05:00

The economy is in such dire straits that I’ve had a few calls bartering for my services. This one woman offered to present a complete design plan for my apartment in exchange for six months of therapy at my rate of $150 an hour, once a week. I told her I didn’t need my space redesigned, that I liked it the way it was. Her offer was intriguing though. I asked what her problem was and she said it was over aggressiveness. I had to laugh since her offer seemed so spot-on at addressing a difficult situation. I wished her luck and told her I’d call if I grew weary of my surroundings. I doubted I would, as I don’t pay much attention to my surroundings. I wondered why I don’t and whether it’s OK not to care. Maybe I should reconsider. Nah!

Another caller said he’d exchange plumbing for a month’s worth of anger management therapy. I told him no thanks and he told me to go fuck myself and hung up before I could laugh. The numerous patients I see all seem to be in crisis. Minor emotional blow-ups are now the equivalent of Krakatua blowing its top in 1883. How did David Cawley know that my phone was ringing off the hook and that I’m feeling overwhelmed? That’s easy. He’s watching me just as I’m watching him. But, why now? What’s different now that after sixty-five years I’m experiencing this…craziness?

I love what I do and I think that designer does too. I’ll bet she’ll find some therapist to barter with. Now there’s an old idea that needs to be reinvented. It requires that everyone enjoy what they do. It would have to start early….Nah, who would ever love cleaning toilets. My mind lately has been all over the place. It’s like my mind has a mind of its own. Where is it all coming from? It’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to believe that matter – I’m talking about my brain – could produce these ideas. Alexander Hastings’ TV analogy makes sense to me, but I sure wouldn’t share it with my esteemed colleagues. Dogma, you know. Step outside its rigid walls and you might as well be a leper.

I just finished with my last patient, a depressed woman of excessive weight, whose self esteem is in the crapper. She was seeing a psychiatrist whose primary method of treatment was anti-depressants. They at least allowed her to function, but did little for her psyche. It is that old thinking that the brain is the seat of consciousness and that everything is a chemical reaction. But what if, as Alexander suggested, the brain is a conduit and the chemical changes in the brain that we believe cause depression are secondary expressions. What if the brain, as a conduit, responds to a depressive state of mind by releasing the chemicals we see when we go looking for them. If that is the case then anti depressants by themselves can never fully cure someone of depression. I’m not a depressive person, but I lived with one in college and so have some second hand experiential knowledge.

My phone interrupted my musings, as often happens these days. I don’t recognize the number, but have an impulse to pick up. Oh, that’s another thing. Impulses. They are becoming more frequent and less easy to ignore, like this phone call.

“Hello, this is Dr. DeRosa,” I said.

“Thank you for picking up, Doctor. This is Eleanor Cawley. I’m praying you’ll be able to take on my ten year old son. I’m at a loss about what to do and he is so troubled.”

He’s troubled! If you only knew, lady. “What’s his name?” I asked.

“David Cawley,” she said. “He is so angry all the time and he has taken to hurting himself.”

I hear her stifling her tears. I do some quick math. He’d be forty years old when the David Cawley that is me would be born. Christ, what an opportunity to help shape the psyche of my own father, but then I think how there are some great fathers who have some pretty screwed up kids. There are also great kids that have screwed up fathers. Go figure.

“When can you bring him in?” I asked.

“I can be there by one o’clock,” she said.

“That’s perfect. I have an opening then and it will give me some time to catch a bite to eat. I assume you have my address.”

She said she does and we concluded the call. I reside in wacko world. It in no way resembles the world that had formed my heretofore rational mind. My assumptions…no…change that…my beliefs about consciousness and reality are being assaulted from all sides. You know that song, solid as a rock, rock, rock, rock, rock. Well, the rocks I thought were made of granite are turning out to be nothing more than sandstone. I need a beer.

I leave my office and cross the street to O’Toole’s Bar and Grill. The bartender is an Irishman, as you’d expect, and has been in the US for ten years. He has six kids. What’s with the size of Irish families? Maybe it’s the rhythm method that gets them go big. They’re mostly Catholic.

“Hey, my Italian friend,’ He yells from across the bar as he sees me walk in. “Can I pour you a good Irish beer?”

“Guinness, Timothy, and have the kitchen grill me up a cheeseburger and fries.”

I sit at the bar and wait for my Guinness. I wish they didn’t take so long to pour. “How’s the family, Timothy?” I asked. I always ask it of Timothy as he is so fond of regaling me with his family stories. Why are the Irish such good story tellers? Could there be a gene for that, too?

“Let me tell you, now,” he begins in his lovely Irish Brogue. “Little Mary came home with the best story the other day. Would you like to hear it?”

Mary is eighteen.

“The bartender at McGrath’s down the road a piece notices a new patron at his bar. The man’s an Irishman, of course, by the name of Thomas McClanahan. He orders three Guinness. Drinks them in order and leaves the bar. This goes on for months and months and the bartender and Thomas become close. The bartender, feeling it was none of his business eventually had his curiosity overcome him.

“Thomas,” he asked. “You’ve been coming in for months and months and always order three Guinness.”

“You’re wondering why, now, aren’t you, Patrick. Well, you see, I have two brothers and they’re back in Ireland and so I order a Guinness each for them and one for me self. We’re very close, don’t you know.”

“The winter passes and spring approaches. One day Thomas comes in and orders two Guinness instead of the usual three. Well, you can imagine that Patrick thinks the worst. As he set down the two Guinness he tells Thomas how sorry he is over the passing of one of his brothers.”

“Thomas realizes how Patrick might have come to that conclusion. No. No, Patrick. My brother’s are in the pink of health. It’s just that it’s Lent and I’ve given up drinking.”

Timothy and I both crack up. I think I needed the story more than I needed the Guinness, but drink it happily nevertheless. The Irish consider Guinness to be food and so by their standard I have two meals for lunch. It’s a good thing I run. I pay the bill and give Timothy my usual large tip. He is worth it. I’ve plagiarized his stories many times. I cross back to my office and await Eleanor Cawley and her son. I can hear my heart in my ears. It is faster than usual. The knock comes and I let them in.

Eleanor is a striking woman and obviously the one who passed on David Cawley’s Scandinavian genes. Her blonde hair is pulled back tight and tied off in a pony tail. She has on blue jeans and a T-shirt that do not come from Walmart. Odd that she’d wear a T-shirt in winter, but then her genes were probably better equipped to deal with the cold than mine. Little David Cawley hangs close to her. I could tell he doesn’t want to be here. He must look more like his father because he doesn’t look like her. Little David is short, stocky and has brown eyes.

“Do you know why you’re here, David?” I asked.

“My mom says I’m angry and need help.”

“Do you feel angry now?” I ask the question, but know the answer. He says nothing. I address Eleanor. “Would you mind if David and I had a chat alone?”

“Whatever you think is best Dr. DeRosa.”

I escort David into the inner sanctum and offer him a choice I have never offered anyone else before. “Would you like to sit behind my desk or on the sofa?”

“Neither,” he said. I didn’t expect that. “I want to stand and move around.”

I decide to sit on the sofa. “Do you know why you’re angry?”

“Yes.”

Talking to young kids is like removing a bullet with chop sticks. It’s difficult finding the bullet. Your hands aren’t used to holding the sticks, and when you do grab hold of the bullet the sticks slip.

“Would you like to share?” Shit…that sounds so, so…bullshitty.

“Promise not to tell my mom?” At this point David is at my window staring down at the street. I nod my agreement. He doesn’t see my nod as he is looking at the street. Maybe I thought he had eyes in the back of his head.

“She wants me to do stuff I don’t want to do.”

“We all have to do things we don’t want to do sometimes,” I said.

“Who said so? Is it in a book?”

This is going to be tougher than I thought. My psycho babble isn’t going to work and I sense that David is much smarter than he lets on. I feel like he is laying a trap for me.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve seen it written in books. As a matter of fact I’ve written it in my books.”

David moves away from the window and stands behind my desk. He reminds me of a lawyer stalking a courtroom. I better watch what I say lest he raises an objection. Stick to the facts Dr. DeRosa, just the facts.

“Where did you get it from?” David asked. “Is it in a law book somewhere that we have to do things we don’t want to do?”

“Can you give me an example of what your mother wants you to do that you don’t want to do?” I asked, thinking better of my line of cross-examination that became his line of cross-examination.

“She’s always on me about doing my homework. I hate doing homework.”

“But if you don’t do your homework you won’t do well in school. Isn’t doing well in school important?”

“Maybe, if they taught something that I was interested in.”

“There are many things you’re not interested in that you need to do well in our society. You need to be able to write and read and at least do simple math.”

“You sound like my mother. I feel like I’m being ganged up on. She could have asked one of her friends to do that instead of paying you to do it.”

The kid certainly isn’t intimidated by authority and his language skills are good enough to hold his own. “OK,” I said. “Let’s start over. What interests you?”

“Doing what I want to do?”

“And what do you want to do?”

“I don’t always know, do you?” he said.

“When you do know, what is it?”

“I like having fun, and I don’t like not having fun.”

“So fun is interesting. That’s a good start. And I agree with you, David. I have a much better time when I’m doing fun things.” I don’t dare get into the dreaded responsibility issue.

We go back and forth for most of the hour. I discover he likes to read, but only books that interest him. He doesn’t like the books the school makes him read. He likes riddles and figuring things out. He’s not competitive. He’s content with doing his best in things that he likes, but seemingly has no need to be the best. His best is best for him. The kid seems to know his mind. Maybe he can hold up against the tides of his parents desires for him and his culture’s imprint of its own expectations. I’m surprised he’s held out this long. By his age I was as imprinted as a gosling. You lead, I’ll follow.

Would I be seeing this kid if I didn’t have my dream? I usually refer kids to colleagues more proficient with the rug rats. I always thought of them as miniature vampires. The truth be known, they intimidate me as you probably just noticed. No, I would not have seen David. What does that mean? It means that my dream changed my behavior. But, that happens all the time, doesn’t it? A female patient of mine dreamt that the plane she was scheduled to fly out on the next evening crashed into Long Island Sound. It was so real to her that she didn’t take the flight. It turned out to be TWA flight 800 that went down in Long Island Sound in July of 1996. Her dream changed her future and that of her kids. So, I’m comfortable in doing what I’m doing. As I said before, dreams have meaning. Sometimes they’re symbolic. Sometimes they’re literal. Good thing for my patient she chose the latter.

I’m going to let this take me where ever it takes me. There’s something behind it and I’m not going to fight it. I suggest to Eleanor Cawley that she acquiesce to David’s proclivities as long as she is comfortable doing so. After all, she has her own guidelines regarding parental responsibilities. I don’t expect her to allow him to chug-a-lug a can of Drano, but maybe an occasional missed piece of homework would be palatable to her. We scheduled our next visit after the holidays. Christmas and Connecticut beckoned.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Six

2010-04-12T06:33:00.000-05:00

I rented a Ford Escape thereby contributing to the greening of America and the expansion of American employment opportunities. The simple things work. Have you ever driven the I95 corridor between New York City and Eastern Connecticut? If you haven’t, here’s my advice. Only do it if it’s a matter of life and death. It’s about a hundred miles of asphalt laden hostility. It’s as if it was designed by a group of psychologists bent on providing a release valve for pent up hostility. People who are typically as meek as a canary feel free to rage against the machine. It’s nothing for a mother driving a minivan filled with screaming rug rats to flip me the bird and scream obscenities that would make a Russian sailor blush. Russians are notorious for their creative use of expletives. I often drive the whole way at 65mph in the left lane. I feel it’s my duty as a psychologist to provide as many safe avenues for the masses to vent their everyday frustrations.

The Chinese have a saying, “May you live in interesting times.” I heard it in the movie Disclosure. Demi Moore is a cougar. Funny what labels attach to age. Anyway, there is more to that saying than at first meets the ear. I am living in interesting times. They suck, but they’re interesting. Interesting doesn’t have to mean good. This avalanche of emotional distress, mine included, interests me. It probably doesn’t interest a parking attendant, but it interests me. Why now? Why me? I think of these things as I knock off mile after mile. Thank God they got rid of those God awful toll booths.

I turn north onto I395. Route 32 is a mere twenty miles ahead, and from there it’s a straight shot to Storrs. My sister is four years younger than me and until adulthood was a great thorn in my ass. A thorn in my side is far too mild. I think she’s really looking forward to my arrival this time because her twenty year old son has been dabbling in narcotics use, to use her words. It’s been my experience that parents underestimate by half their child’s drug use. My nephew is a great kid, but then most young drug users are great kids….until their drug of choice sinks its fangs into them. Heroin deaths are through the roof and physicians have become partners with the drug dealers in perpetuating the problem. I wrote a book, remember. A simple back ache can result in a severe oxycontin addiction. Whatever happened to good old fashioned heating pads?

An old lady passes me on the right and flips me off. I wonder if she appreciates what I just did for her. Maybe it releases just enough anger so that she won’t go home and poison her husband. She can barely see above the steering wheel, by the way. Not that that has anything to do with anything. It reminds me of an event from my college days. I was in Minneapolis, Minnesota and my compadres and I decided to try some mescaline. We spent the day at the Minneapolis zoo laughing hard. I had a VW minibus at the time. Anyway, on the drive back to the dorm I took a wrong turn and wound up on the highway. I looked out my side view and saw a car on my left approaching at 85 mph or so it seemed. The car was packed with eighty year old women. I mentioned it to my buddies. They laughed and told me to look at my speedometer. I was going 35mph. We still laugh about it today. It’s funny how drugs alter perception. The reason I bring it up is because it points out how perception varies so much from person to person. Individual perception is everything. More and more I’m convinced that there is no ultimately correct perception. I ramble, but then there is no one to talk to. Ever talk to yourself?

My sister, Rose, lives on the top of Spring Hill, a side road that will take you to UConn, basketball capital of the world. She has a dormered cape that sits on three wooded acres. I pull into her driveway and beep my horn. I’m not sure why I beep my horn, but I do it each time I drive up here. Come to think of it I don’t know why I do many of the things I do. They seem so automatic. Rose and Charlie come out their front door waving. Charlie is her husband. Rose is shorter than me and blond, taking after our father in body coloration. Charlie is a lumberer and I don’t mean in the Paul Bunyan sense. Following gender roles and etiquette Charlie grabs my bags and follows Rose and me into the house.

I smell cigarettes. James must be smoking because I know Rose and Charlie would rather breathe in dog shit fumes than cigarette smoke. Funny how these beliefs work. When I was a kid I remember athletes and doctors doing cigarette commercials on TV. Some ice skater would glide over to the rail and light up. “After a hard workout nothing settles me down like a Lucky Strike.” I don’t smoke, but I’m not rabid about having smokers around me. Pretty soon we’ll be shipping them all off to Dr. No’s Island. I notice that Rose noticed that I noticed the smoke smell. Lot of noticing going on. Maybe we should all be doing more of it. You know, less auto-pilot and more self navigation.

“James Smokes,” Rose said. “I saw you sniffing the air so I thought I’d clear the air on the matter. He’s upstairs sleeping.”

I look at my watch. 1pm. “Late night?” I asked.

“They’re all late,” she said. “But then his night doesn’t begin until at least 10:30. We’re in bed before he even goes out. The times, they are a changing.”

Rose sings that last line. She was a flower child back in the day. Now she’s a born again Christian. How she got from there to here I can’t tell you. She was a Catholic before she was a flower child. I was a Catholic before I got to be me. But me is a changing thing. I’ll bet it is for you too. We catch up on our lives and I remind her I’d be heading down to Norwich the next day to visit with the egg head and his psychic mother. That’s not quite how I said it. Sounds hard, doesn’t it.

Rose has my book, Breaking Addiction, lying on the coffee table right in front of me. I know what is coming.

“I’m worried about James,” she said. “He’s a different boy than when you last saw him. He loves you and would never sleep in past your arrival. Things have been hell around here. I’ve read your book three times. Implemented your suggestions, but it doesn’t work. Maybe James doesn’t fit the mold.”

Talk about getting to the point. “I’m rethinking the issues,” I said. “Maybe I’ll write a new book….call it Addiction as Choice.”

“I know it’s a choice,” she said. “It’s not as though he’s unconscious when he does it. I want to know how to get him to make different choices.”

“I don’t know how to do that yet,” I said. “The idea just came to me a few days ago.” I don’t tell her the idea came to me in a lucid dream. “Maybe it’s not about his choices. Maybe it’s about ours.”

“That’s a lot of maybes, Augusto. I’ve prayed to Jesus, but in his divine will I guess it’s not James’s time to quit.”

“Maybe it’s not,” I said. “Maybe there’s purpose to it that neither us nor his conscious mind is aware of. Maybe he isn’t listening to himself. Maybe he’s not paying attention to what he does.”

“How can anyone do something they’re not paying attention to?” Charlie said. He may be a physical lumberer, but his mind isn’t.

“I don’t know,” I said. “This is coming to me as I speak. Maybe it’s not paying attention to the beliefs that drive the doing.” That comes out of left field. I’m not even sure I know what it means.

“I don’t have to have a belief to brush my teeth,” Charlie said.

I think about that before answering. “Sure you do, Charlie. You believe your teeth will rot if you don’t brush your teeth every day.”

“That’s a fact, not a belief,” Rose said.

“I wonder. Things we once thought were facts aren’t facts anymore. Do you remember that Woody Allen movie, Sleeper? He wakes up in this sanitarium some time in the future. He walks out on the porch and finds the doctors smoking and eating cake. Woody is aghast. The doctors tell him they discovered that smoking and eating sugar is good for you. Hell, no more than a hundred years ago we believed that bleeding cured disease. Like I said, I’m just beginning to process this.”

“Should I wake him?” Rose asked.

“No. Let him sleep. I’ll unpack and have a cup of coffee. I bought a new mug. Brought it with me.”

I bring my bag upstairs and unpack. I notice Rose nailed a crucifix above the guest bed, a subtle form of proselytizing. A few years ago I would have draped my T-shirt over it. I wonder why she felt Jesus needs an army of recruiters. I mean, hell, if he wanted more devotees why not just create them. I would. Why leave it up to flawed humans? I check my cell for missed calls. I turn it off when driving so as not to be tempted to answer a call and get pulled over by the state cell phone police. Debra calls. I hit the send button, which I know I don’t have to do, but do anyway out of habit. Remember, I grew up with dial phones.

“Hi Augusto. I see you made it safely.”

“I have a crucifix over my bed,” I said.

“Sounds appropriate to me,” Debra replied. “So, have you cured James of his addiction? I know you just got there, but you are pretty good at what you do.”

I can feel her smiling at the other end of the…..It’s not a line anymore.

“You wouldn’t be mocking me, would you Debra? I’m dreading my stay here. Too bad I can’t stay with the Hastings.”

“But then Alex’s mother would know all your secrets. Woo woo.”

“You’re way too rational for your own good. A little woo woo might loosen you up a bit. We’ll go to a séance when I get back. What do you say?”

Debra laughs. “It might be fun,” she said. “Maybe the ghost of Christmas future will show up.”

“Maybe. I should go. Rose put on some coffee and I have a Jones rearing its needy head. I’ll call you later.”

James wakes up an hour later. His pupils are the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Not a good sign. The drugs have their teeth into him. They dull him down so that he can’t fight back. Addiction as choice…hmm. It doesn’t make sense that anyone would choose addiction, at least in the sense we generally understand choice. Maybe our thinking mind isn’t what makes the choice. Is there a part of our consciousness responsible for the ‘shit happens’ scenarios we all fall prey to? Are accidents not accidents? Where am I going with this? It’s so outside my realm of experience. It certainly seems as though we choose some things, but it is just as obvious we do not choose all things. Maybe my understanding of the psyche is too small, blinded by all I have learned and been taught, blinded by what I believe. “What do you believe, Augusto?”

The country side in Storrs is beautiful. No industry. Few businesses. Storrs is a rural college community, much as it had been when UConn began as an agricultural college way before my day. I excuse myself and go for a run. A big snow storm is due by 7pm. Plenty of time to get in a few miles. Running is my meditation, but instead of stilling the mind it opens it up. It seems to create a channel to the realm of ideas. Whether that realm was inside the brain or outside doesn’t matter to me, although I have recently become curious as to their origin.

There is little traffic on these rural roads. Perfect for a runner, biker or walker. I heard that at one time a squirrel could go from Maine to Virginia on a highway of treetops. I guess the idea excluded rivers. Maybe they canoed across, and anyway a river is not the ground. You can’t go anywhere in New England and not see a squirrel, and there are plenty of them in Storrs. They are very good at being squirrels. I doubt they compare themselves to other squirrels. I don’t think a small squirrel wishes he was a bigger squirrel like I used to wish I was a bigger boy when I was little. It seemed bigger boys had more advantages. I think that might have been the first thing I compared myself to, bigger boys. Comparing! Christ, what a curse. And it must be taught. I don’t think it’s hard wired into our deoxyribonucleic acid. That’s DNA.

A mile into my run I begin to sweat. I love to sweat. I met Joe Campbell once while on vacation in Hawaii. He had a home there. It was shortly after his Power of Myth came out and before he really got famous, thanks to Bill Moyers. He’s the ‘follow your bliss’ guy. At least that’s how the public remembers him. Great mythologist, though. He really ‘got’ it. Hmm…follow your bliss? Sounds like little David Cawley. I didn’t think of it that way until this moment. See what I mean about that channel opening up. It’s hard to follow your bliss or even know what your bliss is when you spend your life from the earliest days learning how you stack up against all the others. If mothers had their way we’d all be doctors and bottom feeders… that’s slang for lawyers. I know several lawyers and they’re good guys. I guess no one likes being sued or prosecuted.

If I chose not to see little David Cawley would it have altered the David Cawley in my dreams? From what I gathered, he gets to experience it all, the high road, the low road and the middle road, possibly everything in between as well. I try to imagine all of us doing that, but the numbers make me dizzy. So how would that work? Let’s say I have to choose between private school and public school. I like public school because all my friends are going to be there. Being an egghead of sorts I also know that I’d get a better education at the private school. The moment I decide on the public school there is a split. I create another me, who until that moment lead exactly the same life as me. Neither of us notices the split and each of us feels as real as the other. To him I’d be the split off and to me he’d be the split off. As our lives continue the branching would be…well…almost infinite. And that’s just me. I wonder if we influence each other. Do you see why I like to run? I never get this by trying to quiet my mind. That’s not to say that you don’t. I’m just talking about me, here.

There’s got to be a purpose to my exposure to this. I don’t believe that everything I do has a purpose. Like, what is the purpose of eating a brussel sprout? I can sort of feel into it when something has purpose. But, is it a purpose I’m talking about or rather is it trying to communicate something to myself? What’s my life’s purpose? Damned if I know. I never said my life’s purpose is to iron out the wrinkles of mankind’s psyche. I like what I do and that’s enough for me. I wonder if a life’s purpose is different than a life’s intent. I like intent better. It’s more general. What do you believe, Augusto? I don’t know, really. All I know is that what I believed a few days ago has come under attack. I’m coming under attack and it feels like the attacker is me.

I better head back to Rose’s. I lose track of time and distance when I go into this free thinking mode. It’s costing me an extra two miles and probably one less hour of awake time. It’s just as well. I’m a much better listener than a talker. That’s what I do. I listen. I just don’t feel like listening to Rose and Charlie tonight. I’m sure James won’t be home until after we all go to sleep. Sleep. Odd how that’s where the action has been lately. So, that’s the plan, dinner, an hour of chat and then dream time. Maybe I’ll see another frog handled mug.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Seven

2010-04-12T06:32:00.000-05:00

James is still out in the night doing what young men have done for centuries. I set my frog handled mug on the nightstand and climb into my munchkin bed. It is a twin size and I had forgotten about it. Maybe that’s why I haven’t asked Debra to join me. Close is nice when you’re in the mood for close, but when it comes to sleep, move over. I decided to keep my mug by the bed stand each night and to use it as a dream trigger. What I had read about lucid dreaming said that there are commonalities in our dreams and that if we focus on the commonalities, like my frog mug, it can trigger lucidity within the dream. Hey, it’s worth a try. It just occurred to me. What if the commonality was an aircraft carrier? I digress.

I don’t know why, but Chuck Tynedale enters my mind just before I shut the lights. Sleep comes quickly as it usually does with me. Dreams were never a big deal for me, being so rational, and all. But, since all of this started I’ve done some research. It seems we all have about three periods of dream time during an eight hour period. These periods are called REM sleep, short for rapid eye movement. When woken up during a REM period the research subjects always report that they were in the middle of a dream. I just thought you might like to know that.

I knew something would happen, but I assumed it would happen in the future.

I see myself sipping from a frog handled mug, but it is filled with tea, not coffee. I hate tea. How do I know it is tea? Because, the gentleman sipping it is me. Again, he doesn’t look like me, but it is me. He wears a broad laced linen collar attached to a shirt with slashed sleeves. I can only describe his pants as britches. The colors are dark. There are fires burning along the street and I can see the Thames River a block away. The smell of it easily makes it through the closed windows, which are probably closed because of the stench. What a God awful place London is. I can see men carting bodies toward large open pits. Thick black smoke billows from the many fires. I see men dumping bodies into hastily dug pits in the ground. It is the time of the plague. I hear a knock at the door.

“Doctor, it is me, Arthur. Do you have further instructions?”

I set my mug down and moved to the door. I am exhausted. “Come in Arthur,” I said. “Take a seat. You must be quite fatigued.”

Arthur enters my office and sits on a stiff wooden bench. He sets his feet perfectly parallel to each other and then looks down at them. He is covered in black soot and wears a scarf or handkerchief over his face.

“I am a bit weary, sir. There are few enough jobs available and my family must eat.” Arthur moves his right foot and immediately moves it back to parallel with his left. I wonder if Chuck is influencing Arthur or if Arthur is influencing Chuck. If Arthur came first then….but what did Alexander Hastings say….all time is simultaneous.

“Have some tea, Arthur. Then you best get yourself over to Mrs. Flanders. Her dearest daughter, Millie, just succumbed to the plague. My God, when will it end?”

“I’m beginning to think it’s a scourge of God.” Arthur said. “It won’t end until we’re all gone, Dr. Smythe.”

“I came to my profession to help ameliorate the suffering and all I can do is try to ease their minds. I don’t think I can continue, Arthur. I have nothing left to give.”

His…my pain is unbearable. I want to shake him. Tell him it is the fleas; that he can be of help. I know I can’t do anything, but if I can’t do anything for my past self then why is my future self contacting me. Why can’t I do for Dr. Smythe what David Cawley is doing for me? What is different about the future or at least the year 2075 that allows this type of contact? What do you believe, Augusto?

I wake up and think about the question. What I believe has something to do with all of this. Is it one particular belief? Until my dream I believed that time was linear and moved at a certain rate. The past was dead and the future unmade. The past was dead. Was it? The past is what I remember about it on an individual level and what we write about it on a mass level. How many times have my memories shifted regarding my own past. Little nuances of change. Is it only my memories that change, or do the shifting memories in some way alter my past? And, what about history? Our understanding of history constantly changes as we unearth more and more information about it. Hell, we once thought the American Indians were blood thirsty savages. Were they savages until we changed our history books?

And if all time exists at once can the past alter the future. Certainly this dream and the others have altered me. Influences. Not change, but influences. All three influence each other. Now there’s a tangled web. I believe in free will and that nothing can influence me unless I allow it. Obviously Chuck Tynedale allows the parallel foot thing, or does Arthur allow the influence of Chuck? Or is it mutual? So many questions! Is it our understanding of our reality… wait…is it our beliefs about reality that shape our reality. Does reality conform to my beliefs about it, or do we all perceive a set reality differently? I thought I believed the latter, but that is being challenged.

It’s 2am. I have to shut down all this mind chatter or I’ll never get back to sleep. I concentrate on my breathing. Have you ever noticed how doing that gags the thinking mind? It shifts my attention away from my thinking. Hey, wait a minute. I thought my attention is my thinking. I recall on my drive up here that there was a stretch of road, about ten miles worth, that I didn’t remember driving. No, really. It was like I came to after being knocked out and I was ten miles further down the road. I was driving the car during those ten miles, but my attention, or what I generally consider to be my attention, was elsewhere. What do I believe? I believe my thinking and my attention are synonymous. Oops! My attention is back to my thinking. Breathe Augusto, breathe. That’s better.

I awaken in another dream. David Cawley is 20 years old. I know, you’re confused. It isn’t the kid, it is the kid’s son, the David I saw in my first dream. He is at the beach, Misquamicut in Rhode Island. Julia and Christine are with him. I can feel the heat of the sun and the bodies of the two girls next to him. I am drawn strongly to both and deeply conflicted about it. I want to be more than just friends, but know that I have to choose just one of them. The girls didn’t know that. To them we are a threesome of longtime friends. David asks Julia to take a walk with him. I know what is coming. He is going to ask her if she’d be willing to move their relationship to something more than good friends. The dream goes blank.

When the dream returns, it returns to the same scene where it began, David lying between Julia and Christine. I feel the same conflict within David, but this time he asks Christine to take a walk with him. Jesus, the split must have happened at the moment of asking. One David asks Julia. The other asks Christine. At the point of the decision both realities play out. All this is from David’s perspective…mine. But what about Julia and Christine and all the decision points they must individually make. What if Julia or Christine or both didn’t want to take that walk or were conflicted about it. Do they split off as well? It is clear that one version of Christine married Bill. But, were there other Christines and other Julias? I suspect there are. I also suspect that Julia’s David is trying to show me more than…what shall I call them…probable selves. They are more than probable. Each one is real in their own right.

I wake up at 7am and walk down stairs. Rose is the one that turned me on to auto coffee makers. I am due at the Hasting’s at 9am. Plenty of time, as it is only a thirty minute drive from Storrs. I can hear Rose in the downstairs bathroom.

“I’ll be there in a minute, Augusto,” she yelled.

There goes my few minutes of peace, I thought a bit ungraciously. “No rush,” I yelled back.

Rose loves roses. Her name might have something to do with it. Her fleece bathrobe has them printed all over it.

“I trust you slept well,” she said, not expecting me to say otherwise even if I didn’t sleep well. “I had the weirdest dream last night.”

Welcome aboard. “What was weird about it?” I asked.

“I dreamt that I was a man, hundreds of years in the future. I was crippled in a bad fall, but somehow I knew I chose that for myself.”

“Why would you choose to be crippled?” I asked.

“My sense of it is that I simply wanted to experience what it felt like. Isn’t that strange?”

If you only knew. “I’ve heard of things far more strange than that. Remember, I work with folks who are…how should I put it…outside the box and looking in. What else did you see in the dream?”

“It wasn’t so much what I saw, as it was what I felt and knew,” Rose said. “Being crippled seemed the smallest of things because I knew I chose it and that whenever I was through with it I could choose not to be crippled. It seemed so real. What do you think it all means?”

There’s that word ‘choose’ again. What chooses? Who chooses? “Are you certain you chose to be crippled? Maybe this guy was nuts. I see a couple cutters in my practice. They choose to cut themselves, but there is a great deal of emotional pain behind it.”

“No, it wasn’t that. I could tell that this man was quite lucid and balanced. He had a beautiful feminine quality about him. Very peaceful. He wasn’t conflicted at all.”

“What was he doing?” I asked.

“Nothing, really. He just sat there looking at me. It must be highly symbolic.”

Or highly real! “I don’t know, Rose. These are difficult times we live in and I suspect our dreams will reflect that. Maybe it was suggestive of you getting to your own place of balance and that it is possible even under the most dire of circumstances. After all, the man was crippled.”

“Maybe,” she said, seemingly convinced. “How’s your coffee? I like your mug.”

“Excellent and thank you.” I take my last sip and excuse myself.

The Hastings live on the other side of a stone bridge that crosses the Yantic River. It should be called the Yantic Stream. The bridge is picturesque and old, but it is sturdy enough to hold my Ford Escape. They live at the end of a dead end dirt road on the top of a hill. It is a beautiful place. Psychics must do well in Eastern Connecticut. Sarah Hastings sees me drive up and directs me to their parking area, a dug-out square sufficient to nestle six cars. A stone walkway, mostly covered in snow, leads up to the house, fifty yards away. The place is isolated but close to the city proper.

Mrs. Hastings greets me at the door and invites me in. She has long curly blonde hair and blue eyes. A granny dress hangs loosely over her trim figure and I notice she isn’t wearing a wedding ring. She introduces herself as Sarah and invites me to sit on an oversized leather recliner. The thing was worth a few bucks and comfortable as hell. I wouldn’t think hell was comfortable.

“Can I get you some coffee Dr. DeRosa?” she said.

“No thank you, Sarah, and please call me Augusto.” She sits on another leather recliner to my left so that I have to twist my neck to speak with her. The room is arranged more for watching TV than for conversation.

“Alex tells me you knew we have hearing impairment running through our family. How did you know?” Sarah doesn’t waste any time getting to the point. I find that personality trait attractive, although it catches me off guard at times. Why do I need to be on guard at all?

“I had a dream where I saw an older Alex wearing hearing aids.”

“How did you know it was Alex?” She asked.

“Someone else in the dream said his name.” I didn’t feel it appropriate to mention the birthday toast.

“You’re aware that I’m a psychic,” she said, more a statement than a question. “Did you come for a session or just to chat? Either is fine with me.”

I decide to spill the beans. I spend the next hour elucidating my recent dream life. I leave nothing out except Alex Hastings’ winning the Nobel Prize. Sarah nods knowingly as I unwrap my story. Sarah isn’t nearly as odd as I thought she’d be. She is just over my two inch height differential that excludes all women over five feet eight inches from my dating life. What a stupid rule. Maybe I’ll change it. She doesn’t speak until I stopped talking. I like not being interrupted. Debra interrupted me all the time.

“That’s quite the story,” she said. “I assume you have some questions for me, a woman who has lived most of her life outside the confines of consensus reality.”

Sarah notices me squirm in my chair. “No, no, Augusto,” she said laughing. “I’m not offended in the least. I’ve never been much for comparing myself to others or to the norm. God knows I’m not normal by normal standards. I’m pretty comfortable in my own skin, however.”

I definitely have to get rid of my height standard. “How do you avoid comparing yourself to others?” I asked. “It’s part of human nature.”

“It’s not part of my human nature…as far as I can tell. If that were the case you or one of your colleagues would have been tending to me on a regular basis.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Many of my patients are…my patients…because they fall short in their own minds. You can only fall short if you are comparing yourself to an arbitrary standard.”

“An arbitrary standard of normal,” Sarah said. “I remember reading something of Jung’s. He had a problem with normal also. He was writing about statistics. He said that you can measure a thousand pebbles in a jar and come up with an average sized pebble, and yet there may not be a single pebble in the jar that exactly meets that measurement. We are trained from day one to meet that standard. It’s not rough on those who are born with traits that match it, even though they will repress those few aspects of themselves that don’t. But, consider those that fall one or even two standard deviations outside the norm. Those are the ones we medicate.”

Alexander sits across the room listening. When his mother finished he said, “Mom probably saved me. I mean, I have the intellectual skills to master our educational system. It’s very rational, you know. In that sense I was normal, but not normal at the same time. I took a lot of abuse from the other kids for being smarter than them. Mom taught me to embrace my differences while not judging other’s differences. My differences are what make me who I am.”

I acknowledge Alex and twist my head toward Sarah. “I do have a question,” I said. “Many questions, actually.”

“You look like Ben Kingsley,” she said. “He’s an attractive man.”

I blush. “I thank you on behalf of Ben Kingsley. Why do I feel that David Cawley and Dr. Smyth are me? It’s more than a feeling. I know it, and yet they are not Augusto DeRosa. They’re me and not me at the same time.”

“If this were late summer you’d see a lawn full of dandelions out that window,” she said. “They would no longer be yellow, but would be pregnant with downy seeds ready for the wind to caste them adrift. You probably picked them and blew on them when you were a child. I still do it. You are the dandelion, just as I am the dandelion. Augusto DeRosa is but one seed caste adrift in space and time.”

She has a beautiful way about her. I can barely concentrate on the words she speaks. They are more poetry than prose.

“You are but one focus of attention of a self that is vaster than your mind can imagine.”

“How do you know this?” I asked. “How can anyone know it?”

“Because I experience it every day. Think of it this way.” Sarah turns on the television and mutes the voice. “Think of yourself as the dandelion full of seed, and think of the television’s hundreds of channels as individual focuses of attention of the dandelion. A wind blows forth and the seeds become the channels. They are all different and yet all contained within the set. Who you are is the watcher, the set and the channels. Many refer to it as self with a capital S, or soul, or spirit. It matters not what you call it.”

“But why in this time are we….am I beginning to feel it. There’s something going on that is different than all other times. How does one test for this.”

“Ever the rationalist, eh, Augusto?” she said, more as fact than an accusation.

I don’t feel the least defensive by her words. It occurs to me that she is the perfect parent for a brilliant child who is to make a discovery that has the potential of changing everything. What luck!

“You can’t test for something like this, Augusto. You must experience it, and you are beginning to. Many are. But they are confused for they have no framework to attach their experience to. It’s not normal.” She laughed. “There’s that word again.”

I hear her stomach growl. It doesn’t embarrass her in the least, but I am embarrassed for her. What’s that about?

“My body is telling me that it is time to eat. Will you stay?”

Will I stay? Can Superman fly? Is the Pope Catholic? Come on, Sarah!

“I’d love to,” I said. Oh shit, I wonder if she can read my mind. I don’t have any experience with psychics.

Sarah serves homemade soup leftovers. Does my attraction to her make her soup seem like the best soup I ever had? No, I know what best tastes like. I’m Italian, remember. It snowed heavily the night before. She said she has an extra pair of snow shoes and would I like to go for a hike. There are trails behind the house that lead to the Yantic River at the bottom of the hill. Alex Hastings is not included in her invitation, a point that does not go unnoticed by me. I am thankful that I’m in good shape. The last thing I wanted was for Sarah to have to lug me back to the house. She could probably do it.

It is a fluffy snow, but deep. Without the snow shoes this hike would be impossible. I got right to my point. “I noticed you’re not wearing a wedding ring.”

“I took it off a year ago. Alex’s father, Thomas, died two years ago. A drunk driver hit him head on. Despite what I believe about death it was a difficult time. His energy hung around for about a year. When it was gone I took off the ring.”

“What is it you believe about death that is any different than what the rest of us believe?”

“I believe death is a choice, and certainly not an end. The choice is not by what we call our conscious mind, but is made at a deeper level of consciousness. What do you believe death is?”

“It’s an end. What comes after it, if anything, I rarely think about. There is something, though. I can feel it.”

“I look at death the same way I look at birth, a transition to something else.”

“A transition from what?” I asked. My heart rate is rising and I begin to sweat.

“Another state of consciousness?” Sarah says.

“You mean to or from another point of attention as a human?”

Sarah stops and looks at me. She is beginning to sweat. “These dreams of yours really have you questioning things, don’t they Augusto. Relax, you’re not going to figure these things out by forcing it or by traditional methods. Trust your experience. Let it guide you. Come on, I’ll race you to the top of the knoll.”

She gets a step on me, but I am a well oiled machine. Well used, but well oiled. The knoll is only fifty yards away, but uphill. We reach it together and fall into a heap on the pillow-like snow. We both laugh like school kids do and then we fall silent.

“I like you, Augusto. Alex likes you. He feels a connection to you and now that you’re here I understand why.”

Sarah stands up and offers her hand. I gladly take it and she pulls me up to her. Two deer, a doe and her fawn, dart by a few yards away. Here in the woods there is only us and a world that doesn’t care what we do. It doesn’t judge us for our silliness or our seriousness. It doesn’t compare us to its trees, or the deer, or the squirrels or anything that falls within its perception. I want to take Sarah in my arms and kiss her, but I don’t. Why? What am I afraid of? What belief do I have that says no, you’ve only just met her? And yet the feeling to do it is overpowering. Sarah does it instead. I wonder what that kind of freedom feels like.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Eight

2010-04-12T06:31:00.001-05:00

My nephew is home by the time I return from the Hastings. He’s a bright light in my life and has brought me great joy over the years. He is such a beautiful boy in every respect. It pains me to see him now, for I have who he was to compare him to. There’s that word again. Not only do I compare myself to others, I compare who I am now to who I was. It can go both ways. Good then, bad now or bad now, good then. If it’s the former, I feel bad about what I lost and if it’s the latter I feel guilty about the past. When do I get to feel good all the time? There’s always something about myself to pick on. I don’t remember being taught to do that. Psychotherapists are loons, you know. At least I know I’m a loon. I guess that’s a step in the right direction.

James is sprawled out on the couch watching TV. He has a liter bottle of Gatorade sitting on the table in front of him. I sit on the couch and place his legs over my lap.

“Hey, big guy,” I said. “Where is your mom and dad?”

“They went to the store.” He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t take his eyes off the TV. A commercial for laundry detergent is playing on the set.

“I’ve been having some weird dreams lately,” I said. “How about you?”

“Don’t sleep much. Can’t. By four or five a.m. I’m so exhausted I pass out. Sleep until noon.”

“Why do you think that is, James?” He used to love to talk. Had a quick mind. It’s still there I imagine, somewhere.

“I know mom talked to you, uncle Augie. I’m not brain dead. I know what you’re trying to do.”

“And what is that?”

“You’re trying to save me.”

“Do you need saving?”

“How do you save me from myself. I hate myself.”

Here we go, I thought. I know the pattern. Use drugs. Do stupid things. Hate yourself the next day. The stupid things intensify. The self hatred intensifies. Next thing you know you’re no longer taking the drugs for a high, you’re taking them to escape your own self hatred. It spirals downward fast.

“I can give you all the standard bullshit, James. But I’m not going to. I’m not going to compare you to who you used to be. Lately I’ve been trying to stop that habit in myself. I’m going to love who you are now. What pains me is how miserable you are. I empathize with what you are going through, but I am going to advise your parents how to protect themselves from you. Have you stolen from them yet?”

“A few bucks here and there.”

It was clear he is lying. “Are you doing o.c.’s?”

His silence is a yes. Big trouble. Oxys are expensive. When the money dries up he’ll be on to heroin. Cheap dirty shit. “I’m going to give you some advice, James. It’s new and I’m just now beginning to formulate the ideas. You can be my guinea pig. Whenever you think of it I want you to find something to appreciate about yourself. Right now I appreciate more about you than you do. Put post-its all over the place if you have to. It has to be real though, and it can be as simple as appreciating a strong regular heart beat.”

“What’s that going to do?”

“It’s a step, James. It just shifts you’re energy a little. The other thing I want you to do is to begin catching yourself whenever you go into ‘beat up James’ mode. Underneath everything you are a jewel. I know you don’t believe that. You judge yourself based upon what you do and what you believe about what you do. You are precious to me. A jewel can be dirtied, but beneath the sludge it is still a jewel. When you get it that the jewel is always there you’ll be less prone to judge yourself. Try it. There will be other things, but they’re not clear in my head yet. You won’t get any judgment from me, I promise. Will you try it?”

James sits up. It’s a good sign. “Actually, I’ll try anything. It’s more that the drug is choosing me now, more than it is me choosing the drug.” James stands up and grabs his Gatorade. “I have to go uncle Augie. My folks will be back soon and I don’t want to be around. I’m finding it more and more difficult to look them in the eye.”

I give him a hug and promise myself that I will begin work on my new book, Addiction as Choice.

I think about Sarah and how quickly I became attracted to her. I hardly know her and yet there is a pull. Maybe it has something to do with that love-at-first-sight thing. I know it exists. Some of my patients experienced it. Is it love I feel or just a strong attraction? An attraction to what? She has an energy about her that is more than just appealing. It is like a magnet. So much is happening. My walls are being struck down from all sides and I have no defenses to stop it. I don’t want to stop it.

I hear James pull out of the driveway. I’m worried about him. Life would be so much easier if I didn’t give a shit about anything and didn’t care about anyone. Is that even possible? I don’t think so. I remember telling one of my patients that it’s easy to reach enlightenment if all you do is hide-out in a cave and meditate. No brothers or sisters or wives or husbands or children or friends to give you those little and sometimes big tweaks that make you know you’re alive. The tweaks are both good and bad. What is good for one person may be bad for another. What do you believe, Augusto? It’s called moral relativism. It’s pretty much driven by the culture. The problem is that each individual holds their brand of morality as truth and then either argues for its rightness or kills for it. I have to start writing some of this down. Where the hell is all of this coming from? My mind feels like it’s speeding, but not like on amphetamines. My mind is not telling me to clean the house. It’s rearranging my psychic furniture.

I’m angry. Not at anyone in particular, but at my inability to grasp what is going on inside my head. I feel like Einstein must have felt just before the final piece of the puzzle came to him in his quest of the theory of relativity. Odd that I should think of that. It pertains to time. What does it say? I remember, it says two events, simultaneous for some observer, may not be simultaneous for another observer if the observers are in relative motion to each other. That’s pretty much the textbook definition for dummies and even that doesn’t make much sense. I’m sure Alexander Hastings understands it far better than I, but here’s my quick translation by way of the example I remember. There are two synchronized atomic clocks, one on the ground and the other sitting in a jet. The jet takes off and circumnavigates the globe. When it lands the time on the two clocks are compared, and low and behold the times are different. The difference is small because of the relatively slow speed of the jet compared to the speed of light. But, there is a difference. I’ll have to ask Alex the significance of this, since it really doesn’t seem to have any effect on my daily life.

I hear Rose and Charlie pull into the driveway. I take a deep breath and walk to the door. We need to talk. They need to talk. They put away their last minute Christmas purchases and sit with me in the living room. I have a deep sense of empathy for them as well as for James. Each of them is playing out their individual dramas, all intertwined within the addiction. Rose feels the weight of it all and begins to cry. Charlie sits there holding my sister’s hand.

“It’s like watching a part of yourself die,” Rose said. “No, it’s worse than that, Augusto. I would rather I die than be a witness to the destruction of my son’s life.”

I’ve been told by women and men that the love they have for their children is like no other. Women in particular say this. Men feel it, but don’t voice it as ferociously as women. I knew that Rose would throw herself under the wheels of a bus to save James. Charlie probably would too.

“It’s not your fault,” I said, knowing she had heard it many times before. It doesn’t help, but I say it anyway. What I said next was the most difficult for Rose and Charlie to hear. “You also can’t save him.”

Rose ignores me. “It’s worse than I told you, Augusto.”

“I know, Rose. I just spoke with James. What I am going to say may seem strange to you. I want you both to begin paying attention to what you want for yourselves.”

“We want James to get straight,” Charlie said. Rose nods her agreement.

“No,” I said. “That’s what you want for James. What do you want for yourselves, individually, for it may be different for both of you.”

“I don’t understand,” Rose said.

“I know you don’t, Rose. And you’re not alone in not understanding. What you want for James is not what he wants. Not now, anyway. What he wants now is to be addicted. Maybe not consciously, but it is his choice.”

“Addicts have no choice,” Charlie said. A bit angrily I might add. “That’s why they’re called addicts.”

“I know, Charlie. It’s difficult for me to explain, but that’s what I believed until a few weeks ago. There is something about choice and choosing that we are all missing. Our understanding of it is incomplete.” Christ, this is difficult. How do I explain something I can’t fully explain to myself? How do I explain something I know intuitively, but my brain is unable to form into words? It’s a knowing that I feel more than an understanding that I think.

Rose shakes her head. “If you can’t explain it, Augusto, how do you expect us to understand it? I feel like a miner’s canary slowly dying from a gas all the Ozzie and Harriets are immune to.”

“Maybe they’re not,” I said. “Look around you. Everyone seems to be suffering from one sort of emotional pain or another. There are no more Ozzie and Harriets. There never was. It was an illusion produced by Hollywood.”

I search for a means to explain myself, but can only suggest actions. Actions are real. They provide a sense of doing something....anything in the midst of confusion and crisis. Until I can figure this out I suggest they get a safe and keep all their valuables locked up. Never leave wallets or pocketbooks lying around. Make it impossible for James to get his hands on their financial resources. I know this path he is on might lead to heroin use if it hasn’t started already. Once the money dries up for the more expensive oxys James will turn to the cheaper and dirtier heroin. They can’t take care of James by making the acquisition of his drugs of choice easy for him.

An odd thought comes to me, but by this time I have become accustomed to odd thoughts just popping into my head. I told Rose and Charlie that they couldn’t save James. Only James could save James. The thought that comes to me is more in the form of a question. Does James need saving? What does James saving James mean? It means there is something wrong that needs fixing. Well, that makes sense, or at least it used to make sense to me. After all, I wrote a book about saving the addict. There’s something off about that, something that discounts the choices of the individual. The twelve step programs are the best we have, but that requires a lifetime of being a drugless addict. “Hi, I’m Bill and I’m an....” Maybe the addiction is trying to say something; provide some information. I sense it is not trying to tell the individual that he is a bad person. I’m going to figure this out. I know I am.

David Cawley, James, Alexander Hastings, little David Cawley, simultaneous time, and probable selves are all connected in some strange way. Everything is seemingly connected, but how? Patience, Augusto. I was never a very patient man. I hated it when I chose the slowest line at the grocery checkout. I wouldn’t get angry, but I did get frustrated. Frustrations are a mild form of anger. What moves me from frustration to anger? What do you believe, Augusto? What moves James to anger? We both believe in addiction and we trust what we believe. There’s something here...what the hell is it? Frustration is beginning to morph into its big brother. This free-form thinking is driving me nuts. STOP!

I spend the better part of two hours discussing James with Rose and Charlie. I end on a lighter note telling Rose and Charlie about Sarah Hastings and my attraction to her. Sarah invited me to dinner on the 26th, two days hence. My sister is excited, but questions me about Debra. I tell her it is more a relationship of convenience than love. She let it go at that. Rose is into protecting people, even if it isn’t any of her business. What if I married Sarah? I’d be Alexander Hastings’s step father in this life and his young friend in another. And that’s just on this one probability line. I’ll just have to see how it all plays out. I’m going to my room. Maybe I’ll jot down a few notes for my next book.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Nine

2010-04-12T06:30:00.001-05:00

I’m back in New York and the routine of my life. It’s 2010 and the Health Care bill is ready for a final vote. Too bad about Kennedy’s seat in the Senate. Interesting imagery there. Polarization is not conducive to either cooperation or compromise. Sarah Hastings is coming to visit this weekend. We were intimate over the holiday and I must say that she has completely changed my stereotyped impression of her profession, if I can call it that. She should be counseling my patients, if they could only understand what she was talking about. I have to redefine a few terms. Funny how redefining a word changes things. For instance, she considers facts to be beliefs held as truths. To Sarah everything is belief driven. Mr. Rational has entered a brave new world.

I haven’t smoked weed since my college days. I wasn’t a pot head because I felt the stuff dummied me down. I couldn’t follow my own thoughts and often lost the beginning of a thought as I approached the end of it. It was funny then, both to me and my buddies. They experienced the same lost threads. Things that were hilarious when I was stoned were stupid when I was straight. I thought Easy Rider was the best movie ever made. A year ago I watched it again with James after hyping it to him for years. It barely seemed the same movie that I remembered from the 1960’s. It was inane. James agreed. We were straight when we watched it. At least I was. The sound track is still the best ever.

I have a friend who works as a corrections officer. He’s getting long in the tooth and trades his Viagra for weed with a thirty year old co-worker. Go figure. He did me a favor and gave me a couple buds. He told me this stuff is nothing like what we smoked back in the late 60’s. John calls it medical grade, a real head blaster. He says some of it may be laced with LSD. I figure the stuff might weaken some of my walls so that…were my walls my beliefs…so that…what? I lost the thread and haven’t lit up yet. I think too much. I put on the newest Rodrigo and Gabriela CD, light up, and let the effect wash over me.

Marijuana isn’t supposed to be a hallucinogen, but this shit immobilizes me. I’ve never done LSD before, unless you consider mescaline to be a form of LSD. This stuff is definitely laced. How can anyone smoke this shit and function? They get used to it I guess. Some alcoholics justify their continued use of alcohol by saying they are functional alcoholics. I let them know what I think about that. My mind weaves itself into the music. I am no longer listening to the music. I am the music. It’s an awesome experience. I would love to be able to do this without the use of any ingestible material. My perception is different than it was back in the day. Is it because of the recent dream events, or is it because I am older and more experienced? Quit trying to figure this out, Augusto. Go into the experience. Feel it. Become it. I lose track of time…time?

What do you believe Augusto. OK. That thought enters my head let’s go with it. I believe that it is the laced marijuana creating this experience…and yet…what about choice. I chose to smoke marijuana, but I didn’t choose the experience it gave me. Or did I? If I didn’t choose the experience then I remain the pawn of the THC and the LSD, a victim of its effects. That’s the company line. I’m glad I’m recording this, as I’d never be able to write it down. I close my eyes. Faces appear, one after another. Men, women, children, black, white, brown…all the races are represented. I feel the knowing. They are me, Augusto, but not Augusto. There are hundreds of them. I don’t know how long it lasts. I know there was more than just David Cawley and Dr. Smythe. There had to be. I went into this smoke induced haze with an intent, and the intent is being realized. Is this where the choice lies, or is choice even deeper than that?

I go to my window and look out upon Central Park. It is dark, but lit up with colors of all sorts. What am I seeing? The leafless trees shimmer with moving greens and blues and yellows and reds. The leaves that are gone now appear to shimmer in potentia. The colors reach out and mingle with other colors emanating from the snow, the bushes, the people. I am witness to a kaleidoscope of colored energy. Beautiful. Alive. Am I merely a witness or the actual creator? Hubris! I look at my hand and it shoots out greens and yellows, mixes with the window, the curtains. I reach for the tree across the street and it reaches back. I feel it. I feel the energy of it. It’s not solid. Like the faces they are me, Augusto DeRosa. I know I sound like a marijuana commercial, but it’s not that. It’s a glimpse at a possibility, a peek through a window into a reality far more complex than I had ever suspected. Why me? Was it only me? This changes everything and all it took was the realization that it is me choosing this. An insight came that I use the marijuana as a focal point, but that it is me creating the experience.

I wander back to my chair that is glowing in various swirling shades of blue and green. It doesn’t look like it can support me, but it does. I trust it to hold me. I look at my frog handled mug sitting on the table next to my chair. It triggers something. What had been an experience that simply happened and that I observed, now becomes one that I can consciously control. A clarity comes over me. Thank God for this recorder. God? I almost feel like God, or at least my conception of God. My Catholic upbringing gives me a twinge at that thought. Strong belief there! I think of Sarah and see her energy. How do I know it is hers? How, how, how? What are the mechanics of all this? And why now? Why me? Maybe it isn’t just me. That’s something to investigate. But, this experience shows me that everything is me and not me at the same time. A paradox! Am I alone? Is it all an illusion, Maya? Are the Hindus right or just partially right? Can something be real and not real at the same time? So many questions! So few answers! As James has told me so many times and much to my irritation…Chill. I hate it when someone tells me not to do something I’m doing.

I call Sarah. “I’m stoned.” I said. “I see what you see. The energy. I miss you.”

“I miss you too, Augusto. I used to think seeing energy was the normal thing. But that was when I was very young. It became a curse when the people I told freaked out. I became an oddity. They did x-rays, but found nothing. Gradually I accepted it as a gift, thanks to my parents. Now I realize it is something we are all capable of doing, some more easily than others. How was it for you?”

“Real, but not real.” I said. “I have such strong beliefs about how my reality works that I can’t get past them yet. I’m more tired now than buzzed...I think. I recorded my impressions as I was experiencing them. I’m looking forward to hearing what I said.”

“Me, too. Maybe you’ll let me hear it this weekend. I can’t wait to see you in your element. Alex is excited that we’re seeing each other. He likes you. I like you.”

“Like?”

“For now,” Sarah said. “That’s all you’re going to get out of me, but it’s a big like. Not a little one.”

I could feel her smiling on the other end. “I’ll settle for that….for now,” I said. “I think it’s time I got Ben Kingsley to bed.”

We say our good-byes, which I hope will eventually become more intimate. I am sure of it. The frog mug stares at me as if to say, “don’t forget me.” I grab it and stumble into my bedroom. I am exhausted and taking my clothes off is an ordeal. I sleep in my boxers. I hate briefs. Pajamas are ridiculous. I might as well sleep in my clothes. This night I would have, had I taken just one more hit from the pipe. My mattress is one of those patented Swedish foam deals. Best purchase I ever made. That is my last conscious thought of the night.

I wake up the next morning with one remembered dream. My dream trigger didn’t make it into this one. I am watching a baseball game at Yankee Stadium, but the game rules are different and so is the gender of the players. In my dream, third base is first and first base is third. Why did the rules change as well as the gender of the players? It has to symbolize something. Base runners are going in the opposite direction. The advantage of being a right handed hitter switches to an advantage for the lefties. In America’s game it is always easier for a right handed batter to run to first. The left hander had to turn around and run in the direction his back was facing. What was an advantage for most people, being right handed, was no longer an advantage. Actually, I thought, it is the world that adapts to the righted handed people. It only became an advantage for the righties when they adapted the world to them. There were too many righties for the lefties to have a say.

Hmm. Brain function. Right handed hitting is controlled by the left brain and the left hand is controlled by the right brain. I get a little twinge on that idea. Let’s stick with it. I teach this so I should remember it. The left brain controls logical, sequential, rational, analytical and objective thinking. It sees parts. Sounds like me until a few weeks ago. The right brain is random, intuitive, holistic, and subjective. It sees wholes. That’s Sarah. So, in reality my dream is saying that we are shifting from a left brain male dominated world to a right brain female dominated world. I don’t like that word dominated. This actually makes sense to me, but the dream specifically points out a rule change. It didn’t just replace male players with female players. I could have figured out what I just figured out without having the rules of the game change. Female is symbolically associated with right brain and male is symbolically associated with left brain. The Chinese have known that for thousands of years. They symbolize it with the Yin and the Yang. So, it’s not as much a gender domination change as it is an energy change. There’s something important here that I’m not getting. What’s the rule change?

I have to get ready for my first patient. Sometimes life gets in the way. I enjoy my sessions with Sean Flaherty. I see him once a month for maintenance. Sean was born to be a salesman. He can fill your house with stuff you don’t need before your check clears the bank. He has a severe flying phobia, a big problem for a VP of sales for a multi-national ball bearing company. Sean couldn’t take a flight without being heavily medicated with mother’s little helpers. That Valium crap screwed a generation of 1950’s housewives. They were hooked before they knew what hit them. Keep them placid and compliant. That was the male mantra. Hollywood made a movie about it, The Stepford Wives. It was really a movie about payback.

When Sean isn’t working he is Mr. Casual. Find him at work and he is Mr. GQ, a regular fashion Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He feared nothing that I could discern except flying. It turned out it was a control thing and a fear of death thing. They were linked like Siamese twins. Time wasn’t the thing for Sean that it was for Chuck Tynedale. A few minutes early, a few minutes late… no big deal. I don’t have a receptionist as it seemed a waste of money to me. I train my patients to take a seat in the waiting area if I’m not immediately available to greet them. They don’t mind and they don’t see my lack of a receptionist as an indication of my lack of skill in my area of expertise, the human mind. I, however, have begun to question it, my skill that is and not my need for a receptionist.

Sean arrives five minutes late according to my cell. He shows me his wind-up wrist watch and with pride says, “See, right on time.” He needs to join the 21st century. Wind up is not the 21st century. We walk into my office and he sprawls out on the couch as though he is here to watch a movie. I get right to business.

“How’s the fear?” I asked.

“What fear is that,” Sean said. “You know, Augusto, I figured out that the fear was not a control issue or a fear of death issue.”

“Oh,” I said. I scribble a few doodles on my yellow pad, content that my patients will never ask to see it.

“It’s a trust issue. I never completely trusted that I’d make it to my destination alive. No shit, Augusto. That little inkling of doubt was just enough to trigger my fear. I didn’t believe in my safety enough.”

“But the safety was still about living or dying and that you couldn’t do anything about it.”

“Sure, but the trust thing was underneath it all. I’ve been practicing trust. You know that I’ve always trusted that I could make the sale. No doubt, nada. I don’t know how I did it, but somehow I made the connection between the trust of my sale making ability and my fear of flying. I knew the stats. I’m less likely to die in a plane crash than I am driving my Lexus. It didn’t help knowing that. I believe in my salesmanship and because I believe it, I trust it, trust the belief. So I said, ‘Hey Sean, what do you believe about flying?’ It turns out that my belief in living through a flight was not as strong as my belief in being the king of sales. So instead of working on the belief that was based on statistics I worked on trust. I can’t change the stats, but I can change my trust. Each time I fly and live through it my trust grows. The belief doesn’t change. There’s always a possibility I won’t make it, but each time I do make it my trust builds. It’s a pretty tough cookie right now...the trust I mean. So, what do you think of them apples?”

“I think you should be sitting in my seat,” I said, not fully disbelieving my words. I think of little kids flying. They don’t know the statistics and yet seemingly have no fear of flying. Still, how do I know that it’s trust or ignorance that keeps them happy in flight? I mean, who’s going to tell a kid that they have a chance of being killed on their flight just to prove a point. The trust thing was interesting though, at least in terms of how it relates to beliefs and how beliefs relate to experience. What comes first, the chicken or the egg? Alexander Hastings would say both.

Sean is one year out from his second divorce and eighteen months into a relationship with a twenty-five year old sales rep in his employ. Dangerous territory, but Sean doesn’t care. He is old enough to be her father, but since he falls within my own twenty year rule I can’t in good conscience say anything about it. He doesn’t want me to. He is having too much fun with it for me to throw in a crow bar and jam up the works. He spends most of the session talking about her and how good the sex is. He forgot that the sex was good, at first, with his first and second wives. If he should ask my opinion about marrying I will point this out. I knew he wouldn’t. He is pretty much a man of impulse and moment to moment living. I have a secret admiration for people like Sean. I keep it to myself. There is something to be said about doing what you want without the attachments of all those ‘shoulds, and ‘should nots.’

My next patient is Wall Street Al. What a peach. He makes more money than God and is the most miserable son of a bitch I have ever met, not treated, but met. I’m not kidding, just looking at him makes me want to run in the opposite direction or punch him in the face. Some patient’s I’m never in the mood for and Al leads the list. He probably leads everyone’s list. Al’s at the gym everyday and it shows. His face is a la Calvin Klein and if you fall for the exterior you’re in trouble. Al knows he’s a miserable prick. That’s why he sees me. I try not to judge him, but it’s like trying not to break wind after downing a can of beans. Eventually you have to go there.

Al doesn’t do the work. He thinks seeing me once a week is enough, and so he comes back each week unchanged from the week before. I should cut him loose, but something keeps me lassoed to him. He’s knows I don’t like him. How could he not. He sat in the Queen Ann and crossed his legs man-like.

“I’ve been thinking of quitting therapy,” he said. “It’s not working. I’m as miserable as I was two years ago.”

No shit Sherlock! “Is your misery the same as it was when you first came here?” I asked.

“Do you mean am I miserable about the same things?”

I say nothing. He is thinking.

“No,” he said, answering his own question. “What made me miserable then was all the pricks in my life. I couldn’t meet a single person that wouldn’t stab me in the back at the first opportunity.”

“But that’s what you told me you do. How is that different now?”

“I’ve actually stopped doing that… most of the time.”

Sarah had mentioned to me that the energy of judging keeps what you judge in front of you. Maybe that’s why Al is still a prick in my eyes and why he finds himself surrounded by pricks. I take a stab. “You’ve stopped being a prick, but do you still judge the pricks around you?”

“What’s not to judge?” he said. “They’re pricks.”

“So, you’re not a prick anymore, but you judge everyone around you. Being a prick is bad in your book?”

“Of course it is. Do you like back stabbers?”

“No,” I said, trying to think my way through this. “But there is a difference between not liking someone and judging them. It’s subtle. Maybe the judgment of them is what keeps you surrounded by them.”

“Come off of it, Dr. DeRosa. Do you judge those priests that diddle little boys? Sure you do, but you’re not surrounded by queer priests.”

He has a point, but I’m not a kid. I point this out to Wall Street Al.

“OK, he said. “Let’s try another one. You told me once that you hate getting behind little old ladies that count out their pennies at the checkout. It must happen often enough for you to tell me about it. Do you judge them for being old and slow and poor?”

“No,” I said. “At least I don’t think I do, but what I do judge is slow checkout lines. I don’t like them and they are bad.”

“All I know is that things are not working out. I’m quitting.”

“Then quit, Al, but do me a favor. Try catching yourself when you go into judgment mode. Try it for a week or more and then get back to me. I’m interested in whether this works or not. Would you do that?”

“Yeah, sure, Doc. You’ve been good to me. I’ surprised you didn’t kick my ass out long ago. I’ll give you a call.”

Al leaves early. When Al is done, Al is done. He pays the full freight for his visit. To him $150 is like tipping a kid a quarter. This judgment thing is incomplete. How do I not judge a pedophile? I don’t. I judge the hell out of them. Maybe the missing piece will come to me. It doesn’t make sense right now.

I had three more patients and then left my office. I am bushed, a leftover from the night before. My days have intrigued me since all this started. I was sleep walking through my life, even with Debra. Oh! I was right about our relationship being one of convenience. When I told her that I was starting a relationship with Sarah she wished me luck. She too, had been looking around for something more substantial. Convenience gets too easy to do. I guess we both felt it’s time for a challenge. If she only knew!

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Ten

2010-04-12T06:29:00.001-05:00

The call comes at 10pm Friday. It is a call I never expected to receive a mere two years ago. What a difference a day makes, twenty-four little hours. The guy who wrote that song knew more than he thought he did. Hmm…I wonder if I know more than I think I do? Rose is hysterical and scared to death. As was her custom of late, she went upstairs to check on James. She found him slumped over in his chair with a hypodermic syringe on his lap. She couldn’t wake him. All she could do was to check his pulse and destroy the syringe. Futile, I thought, but a necessary action for Rose to maintain her own sanity. Action! She had to do something. I try as best I can to reassure her that James is not about to succumb to his drug, but I suggest she call 911. That is a no go. She fears his arrest for heroin use. Rose hangs up to check on James again.

She calls back at twelve pm to update me.

“Do you know what’s it’s like for a mother to have to check her child’s breathing to make sure he’s alive?” she cried. “Of course you don’t. Only a parent could possibly know the depth of despair and fear.”

Rose is right. I can imagine it, but never fully know. James was clueless and would remain clueless until he had his own kids. I struggle against it, but I feel he needs saving, while at the same time a notion develops in my mind that to save someone from themselves is a further discounting of the individual to be saved. To do nothing, however, is tantamount to murder, not of James, but of Rose. I recall why I wrote my first book. My best friend’s daughter overdosed on heroin. He found her in the driveway with the hypo still in a vein. His beautiful daughter in body and spirit was gone at her own hand. A week later his wife committed suicide. Ralphie’s daughter had it all, a good athlete, straight A student, popular, everything our society admires in a kid. We can’t understand why someone who seemingly has everything going for them would choose to destroy it all. Maybe Ruth thought she was bigger than the drug. We taught her that, didn’t we? We taught her that she could have it all, but only if she did the right things. What is all, and are the right things really the right things for the individual?

I think of little David Cawley. He said he didn’t want to do the things the school and his mother wanted him to do. Hell, they have his best interest in mind…or is it the best interest of everything they believed for themselves. He said, ‘I don’t like what they have me read. I don’t like doing homework for stuff that doesn’t interest me.’ Who does, I thought. We still do it even as adults. It’s our culture’s mantra. We call it responsibility. We admire responsible people and denigrate the irresponsible. I do it myself. I do it to myself.

An old patient of mine came to me after the death of her husband. The last words he spoke to her and her son was what drove her to me. He had a family farm on Long Island and worked it hard all his life. He could have sold the land and made a fortune had he not mortgaged it several times over. With his wife and son at his side it was clear his last breath was close by. He looked at his family and said, “I never did enough.” His voice was nothing more than a ghost of its former strength.

His wife, replied, “No, Samuel, No. You did everything for us. You sacrificed everything. I’ve never known a harder working man. We wanted for nothing.”

Samuel gathered his strength and with his last rasping breath said, “No…you don’t understand. I never did enough for myself.” With those words he passed to whatever comes next, leaving his wife and son with a sack of guilt too heavy to carry. How could they not have known? Samuel drew a huge throng to his burial, according to his wife. All of them echoed her words at her husband’s death bed. He was a responsible, hard working man, always putting himself second. What a great man he was. Well, not to Sam’s mind he wasn’t. He was a slave to his beliefs regarding the right way for a man to be. What do you believe, Augusto? I believe the same thing. There is a right way and a wrong way. I believe that. I do. But, what if what I call the right way isn’t my right way. What if the right way is nothing more than a culture induced hypnotic state? Samuel didn’t get it ‘till his last breath.

Is James in that same hypnotic state? Has he already been locked in to a state of being that he is not suited for at a deeper level? How would I know? I am one of those that helped induce that state before he could even talk. Do this. Don’t do that. Kisses for what we believe is good behavior, and time out for what is not acceptable. None of us stands a chance of getting to that deeper aspect of who we are. Little David Cawley is finding that out, but he is doing battle. He is not going quietly into the night. Maybe I can help, but can I do it without the saving aspect of it. Nothing needs fixing. Sarah told me that.

It’s 12:30 am Saturday morning. Sarah will be here at noon. I have to get some sleep. Rose won’t call again unless it’s a medical emergency. James will make it through the night. This I know. How many other nights he’ll make it through is up to him, not us. As I walk to my bedroom, mug in hand, something Jung wrote in Civilization in Transition pops into my head. “We worship a man as a divine model embodying the deepest meaning of life, and then out of sheer imitation, we forget to make real the profound meaning in ourselves....If Jesus had done that, he would have become a respectable carpenter, and not a religious rebel, to whom the same thing would happen today as happened then.”

I like what Jung has to say, but never had the wherewithal to enter the Jung Institute. My psychology is a hodge podge of theories and philosophies that seem right to me. In this sense I guess you can say I’m a rebel, but it is a hodge podge of old ideas. Nothing revolutionary in Psychology has taken place since Freud, Jung being the exception. “We forget to make real the profound meaning in ourselves…” How do I do that if I’m hypnotized before I can even think?

I set the mug on my bed stand and climb onto my Swedish foam. So much is swirling in my head, a bad sign for sleep. I concentrate on my breathing and the next thing I notice is my dream. I have to say that my dreams are seemingly as real as my waking reality. What the hell! I’m watching a sixty-seven year old Jimi Hendrix perform at the 25th anniversary rock n roll hall of fame concert at Madison Square Garden on October 30th. I was there in my awake life. As I said, I never miss the Stones, and Jagger was scheduled to perform. My dream is different, obviously. Hendrix has been dead for thirty-nine years. He is playing a song I never heard before, but from the audience reaction it is their favorite. I ask the guy next to me when he made the song. 1982!

Janice Joplin is also there, along with Jim Morrison of the Doors. They are old and their music less angry, more mature. There are others in the line-up I never heard of, but the audience knows well. What was going on? Why am I seeing this? Is this symbolic of something or am I seeing probables of them as I saw a probable self of David Cawley. But Cawley is me. It makes sense that I might call him up in a dream. What links Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison? Yes, of course. Before going to bed I was enmeshed in the drama of James and why someone who had such a potential as his would choose the road he has chosen. Sure, Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison all died early in my reality. Jimi from a build-up of vomit in his throat, Morrison from a heart attack many believe was heroin induced and Joplin, the speculation goes, from a heroin overdose that caused a fall whereby she struck her head on a table. She was discovered the next morning. All of us back then knew that in one way or another, drugs were involved with all three.

Here in my dream they are alive. Did each of them in the moment of death chose to explore their lives in a different manner, or did the split occur before each chose their drug of choice? Is there already another James, one that split off in the moment he first had to choose between doing drugs and not doing drugs. Do we all experience the choice not taken? Who…what the hell are we? How does this help me understand James, understand myself?

Being lucid I am able to maneuver freely in my dream. I make my way backstage and grab Jimi by his arm.

“Hey, man,” he said. “Do I know you?”

“No,” I said, feeling a bit desperate. “But I need your help. Just a few questions. Please.”

“Alright, man, but make it quick.”

“Why didn’t you play Voodoo Child? It was your best ever.” It is my favorite and many agree.

“Are you high, man. I never made a recording called Voodoo Child.”

“Sure you did, Jimi,” I said. “You recorded it in 1968.” He looks nervous.

“Man, you are high, or crazy or something. I didn’t record anything until 1969. Get lost now you old fool. I’m done with you.”

Either I’m going crazy or I’m being shown something important. I’m not sure which. How does knowing this probable self business help the me that I see in the mirror each morning? If they are all me then we must all have some kind of influence on each other. Is the influence automatic or does it have to be allowed by the one being influenced. Jimi didn’t record Voodoo Child in this reality, so maybe the influences are more subtle, like Chuck’s parallel foot thing. That’s inconsequential, though. Or is it? With so many selves in just one life line there is much to choose from in terms of allowing influences. This is way too complex. How does knowing this complexity alter how I live my life now? That’s what I want to know. How does James, realizing he is so much more than he heretofore suspected, ease out of his addiction? Easing out of his addiction is what I want for him. I need to take my own advice. What do I want for myself? Right now it is nothing more than understanding what is going on.

There is a rule change at play here. My last dream made that clear to me. I don’t think this multiple lives and probable selves thing is new. People have remembered past lives since people have recorded things. A large percentage of the world’s population believes in reincarnation, but in the old sense of sequential lives, not simultaneous lives. They believe it is karma driven and that an end stage exists in the form of enlightenment. What they do not believe is that it is they that are choosing all this. Nowhere have I read that the individual is an immense self. But the immense self has been in play forever. We just haven’t known it. Why am I beginning to know it? Why does Sarah seemingly know it? After all, it was she that came up with the dandelion metaphor.

How does knowing who I really am…very big….help Augusto DeRosa? How about the comparing thing? That has popped into my mind over and over. Why compare myself to someone else if I already incorporate that in one or more aspects of my big self? I’m already rich somewhere, sometime. I’m already a celebrity somewhere, sometime. I’m already everything I want to be somewhere, sometime. I’m even everything I don’t want to be somewhere, sometime. Why not fully explore this individual dandelion seed I call myself, without all the shoulds and should nots, except the ones I choose because I really want to. Why can’t I….why can’t I accept who I am now? Because I believe I have only one life to live and because I believe there is something I’d rather be than me. Talk about lack of acceptance. Hell, I already am me and it’s looking more and more as if I chose to be this focus of attention. Who am I to fight with big daddy? I want to meet him…me. I still think big daddy and I are separate.

I wake at 6:30 and move my mug into the kitchen to fulfill its second function. I like coffee, but I’m not a connoisseur. The store brand is my choice. Sarah is coming today so I have to clean the place. I had a live-in girlfriend once, but it didn’t work out. Her idea of clean and mine didn’t mesh. Not that I’m a slob, but I couldn’t live with the guilt of her cleaning everyday while I read the Times. There were other things as well, but I need not go into them here. I’ll get the place looking at least as clean as Sarah’s home. That should do it. I’m glad she’s not a neat-nik. Would I be doing this if she wasn’t coming? Probably not. I just discovered another should in my life, but this one is no big deal.

Parking isn’t easy in New York. Ask anyone. I told Sarah to drive by the Eldorado first and then drive up and down the side streets until she found a spot. She found a parking place fifty yards from the building. What luck! Now there’s a word that might need redefining. We have a doorman for the building and I gave him a heads-up about Sarah’s arrival. For a country woman she was totally nonplussed about driving into the city. I suggested Metro North, but she wouldn’t hear of it.

“Beautiful spot you have here, Ben.” She liked calling me Ben. I think I’m stuck with it. Maybe not. Time has a habit of changing things.

I hug her and give her a kiss, a real kiss, not a friend kiss or a mother kiss. Ever notice how we have different kisses just as we have different kinds of love? I notice these kinds of things. I don’t notice it while I am kissing Sarah. She has my full attention when it comes to kissing. I give her the tour of the place and stow her bag in the bedroom. We don’t get much further than that for the next hour.

Sarah can’t sit still for long. She tells me bodies are designed to move and so we dress and head for a walk in Central Park. I love the park at night, especially when there is fresh snow on the ground, and the lake lights twinkle off the ice and snow flakes. It is two days past the full moon, so the moon goddess, as Sarah calls it, shines down on us. Very romantic, and I’m a softie for romance.

We couple our gloved hands and begin our circle of the lake. That’s the lake you see people jogging around in the movies. People jog everywhere in New York, usually around their neighborhoods. Sarah is beautiful. I’ve noticed that people’s appearance changes the more I like or dislike them. In my case a plain woman gets downright pretty the more I get to know and like her. And, I’ve known some real Christie Brinkley look-a-likes that have morphed into toads. I ask Sarah her thoughts on the matter.

She stops and takes my face in her hands. I have to look up about ten degrees. That’s the height difference thing at work. “You’re more handsome than you were when we first met,” she said. She gave me a kiss on the lips.

“Well, thank you, Sarah,” I said. “But, why is that? You and I don’t physically change and yet to each other we appear as though we have.”

“It’s more than appearing as though we have,” she said. “My appearance has actually changed, but only in your world, no one else’s.”

“I understand that, Sarah,” I said. “But the change I see in you is psychologically produced. My affection for you has softened what was hard and brightened what was dull. Not that you were ever hard or dull.” Sarah knows what I mean, but I felt I had to explain.

“What if it isn’t just psychological?” Sarah said it as though she believed it wasn’t. “Remember the energy you saw when you were tripping on that laced marijuana. What if you and me and James and Alex and all the other six billion people in the world configure and reconfigure the energy projected to us in each and every moment of our lives?”

“I’m not sure I follow,” I said.

“Look at that tree,” Sarah said, pointing to a perfectly formed maple. “Most people believe that the maple is its self and that we have subtle differences in how we perceive it. That is…perception only takes in the world. It has no power to form it. I’ve seen energy all my life and I can assure you that my mood will change the energy of what I see. Not dramatically, but enough that I know that what I am now seeing is not exactly the same object that I saw before. It’s as though the object projects its energy for me to configure in my own way. It is its gift to me.”

It sounds wacky to me, but I don’t say so. What I said was, “You’re saying that energy responds to your moods?”

“Yes,” She said. “But, it’s even more than that. The energy of you, Augusto DeRosa, allows me to configure it as you. I know this goes against the consensus view of reality, Augusto, but I’ve lived outside that consensus all my life. For me it better explains why you become more handsome to me and I become more beautiful to you. I create you as being more handsome.”

I reach down and grab a fistful of snow and compact it into a snowball. “You’re saying that the energy of this snowball allows each of us to configure it as we see fit? Doesn’t that mean there are two snowballs? Shit, Sarah. Doesn’t that mean in this moment there are two of you and two of me?”

“I guess so, if my intuition is right. There’s the you that your perception configures and there’s the you that my perception configures.”

“Good luck proving that,” I said.

“Quantum physics is proving stranger things than that,” she said. “You ought to have a sit down with Alexander. He’ll fill you in on the strange little world of the quanta. He helped me to understand my psychic abilities. Enough of this. We’re just shuffling along. Let’s get a move on or we’ll never get to dinner.”

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Eleven

2010-04-12T06:28:00.001-05:00

I don’t understand it all, but I am changing. What I am experiencing is about me, but I’m convinced that there is a connection between my experiences and what is currently going on in the world. I’ve been reading various laymen’s guides to quantum physics. Sarah is right. Lilliput is a wacko world…that’s the world of little people in Gulliver’s Travels. In the quantum world light waves turn to particles when they are observed. Instantaneous communication between quanta is beyond the pail. That’s a big one, as it disproved Einstein’s position that nothing could travel faster than light. A French guy named Alain Aspect proved it in the early eighties. Where was I? Twenty years have gone by and I still believe nothing travels faster than light. Certainty and Newton’s classic physics was dethroned as king and replaced with the weird world of probabilities. Why is this important? Because, you wouldn’t have the internet without it, that’s why. There are many other things, too, but the internet is important to me. Nothing is certain to a point of one. Nothing! But some things are more likely to happen than others. This is why Sarah is sometimes wrong in her readings. Anything and everything can change on a dime, and the change occurs now and the precipitator of change is choice.

I’m a speed reader, which is why I can go cover to cover through the Times every day and still have some of my day left. I didn’t go near the texts that Alexander Hastings reads as easily as I read a cartoon strip. They are hieroglyphics to me, brain poison. But, there are many brilliant people who have the gift of making clear the incomprehensible. I have no desire to challenge Stephen Hawking. He’s the brainiac whose mind is encased in a body that no longer works. I just want to understand the stuff, and how it might relate to what I am going through. I was given a puzzle where the pieces are doled out piecemeal, and they are all white and there are no straight border pieces. Only a fool would undertake such a mind-annihilating endeavor. My father used to call me a fool. Finance is where it’s at he used to tell me. Only a fool would choose the mind over money. He was poor all his life. I guess he was a fool, too.

David Cawley continues his appearances in my dreams. I don’t know why he doesn’t come out and say what he wants. He asks questions. I could ignore them as most do regarding their dreams, but I have chosen not to. What are you doing? That was his last question. What do you believe, Augusto, and what are you doing. The two are connected somehow, two white puzzle pieces that fit together. Belief and doing! I better pay attention to my driving. Too much thinking to be on I95. I’m in the right hand lane. I decided it’s not my place to vent anyone’s pent up anger. I’m through with the saving business, not that I wouldn’t pull someone from the Hudson. What I’m getting at is that I am finished, as much as anyone can be finished with anything, with deciding who needs fixing and who needs saving. I’m not heading back to Connecticut to save James or to fix James. I’m going for me.

The biblical story of the Good Samaritan has a power over us, over me. From this moment forward I will only offer advice if it is asked for. It hadn’t occurred to me before my dream era – that’s what I’m calling it - that when my friends or colleagues offer me unsolicited advice I usually get my hackles up and dig in my heels. I give them a polite thank you, but my hidden response is invariably a solid, fuck you. Debra once suggested that I try growing a mustache. That was the one time I came out with my hidden response. She never suggested it again and I never grew a mustache. I did wonder, though. In visiting my sister I want to be with James without telling him he is screwing up his life. I want to notice him in his heroin induced state and my response to it. Hell, who am I to say what another individual might be exploring in this life. I have a hard enough time figuring out my own.

My drive this time is uneventful. No finger birds, no swearing mothers, just a few tailgaters that I ignore. That is odd, by the way. I hate being tailgated and I usually slow down or signal them in some unpleasant way. It only served to make matters worse. By ignoring them I discovered that I encountered fewer of them, and the ones I did draw to me drove around me quickly. Their tailgating didn’t seem as important anymore. Important…I wonder if lessening the importance lessens the incidence of what I had considered important. Were it that easy! I could make a million bucks on weight loss alone. I could call the book, Worried About Obesity? Fagedaboudit!

Rose and Charlie are away for the weekend. They welcomed my stay, as they were not happy about leaving their home in the hands of an addict. That is how they refer to James. He is becoming something other than James, their beautiful boy. I have come to the realization, true or not, that James is using his heroin to allow an aspect of himself to come forward, an aspect that he can’t allow out in a straight state of mind. I want to see James in his element. I have patients that do that. Henry Toodom is one of them. He is an alcoholic that I am convinced uses alcohol to vent his rage. Sober Henry is Mr. Milquetoast, quite unbalanced in his personality. Give him a few drinks and you wouldn’t recognize him as the same man. Henry is what we refer to in the business as a rageaholic. There are other rageaholics that are in a rage, drunk or sober.

As far as I can tell James is, or I should say was, balanced. He’s told Rose that he goes so low psychologically that the only way he can stand being with himself is when he gets whacked with his drug. I want to see him when he is not so loaded he can barely stand. I want to see him when he’s high, but is coherent enough to deny that he is high. Who is he in that state and how do I respond to that state? If I’m going to write a new book then I have to know what I’m writing about.

James’ isn’t home when I arrive, but then I didn’t expect him to be. I know where the spare key is hidden and fetch it from under a garden rock. It’s one of those fake rocks that hold a key, the kind that all burglars know about. Rose might as well have left the house unlocked and hung a ‘welcome burglars’ sign over the front door. I guess the illusion of safety is better than a constant fear of felons. It is quiet. I know Rose appreciates quiet. I roam about the house, feeling into its energy. There are pictures of James all over his parents’ room, the majority of them put there by Rose. I remember this one. He was seven and Rose had him in a pony tail. Her love for long hair began with her love for Jim Morrison. James’ hair was nearly platinum then. He got into a fight with a big kid in his class who gave James shit about the pony tail. Rose delights in retelling that story. In each telling the story is a little different and the bully is a little bigger. James didn’t seem afraid of life then. He does now.

Stephen King was his favorite. I say ‘was’ because he doesn’t read anymore. He was reading King at eight years old. Is it a coincidence that he was peering into the dark side long before he chose to live in it? Was he getting a sense of the monsters that would eventually become symbolic of his drug? If all time is simultaneous then his present may have influenced his choices in the past. The past didn’t influence his present in this case, the present influenced his past. James was prepped for the demons. He knew they were coming? How?

I walk to the end of the upstairs hallway and enter James’ room. Rose has stopped picking up after him. She may have likened it to picking up snow flakes off the ground while others were still falling from the sky. You get the picture. There are three ashtrays full of butts and blunt tobacco. Empty Gatorade bottles are on the floor and his two trash baskets are over flowing. Clothes are everywhere, including damp towels. I can see the care that Rose has taken in decorating the room for her twenty year old son. She framed several record album covers from the seventies and hung them on the walls. Hendrix, Morrison, The Birds, The Beatles and many others are represented. James was introduced to music by Rose. I remember him telling me how he wished he was alive during the days of Woodstock. Rose was there. I wasn’t. Maybe James was there. These are different times.

I hear Sympathy for the Devil on my cell. It’s my favorite Stones’ recording. I listen to a bar, sing along and then flip the phone on. It is Sarah.

“Hi Ben,” she said. “Are you there yet?”

“Yeah, I’m standing in the middle of a trash heap. I’m in James’ room. No one is home.”

“I don’t want to bother you, but I thought you might appreciate this. I just did a reading for a woman, a new patient. It seems her son is having a problem with drugs and she wanted me to do a reading for the young fellow. Believe it or not, she brought his bong.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I usually need an item of the person I’m doing a reading on. It’s probably not necessary, but I believe it is. I assumed she would bring a shirt or something, but she brings his bong. I swear to God, Augusto, I couldn’t stop laughing. So we get down to business and here I am rubbing this bong like it’s a crystal ball. The kid’s energy is thick and tight, guarded, you know. I could see strands of energy trying to penetrate his, but he won’t allow it. The next thing I know his energy shifts. The kid is home getting high with his friends while I’m here with his mother.”

“Big surprise, there,” I said.

“The kid’s energy opens. He lets his friends in. Augusto, it’s like he becomes who he won’t allow himself to be in an unaltered state of mind. I couldn’t quite get what it is, but he feels like if he shows it to others they will see him as weak. I thought I’d share this as I know you are going to try and find this in James.”

I thank Sarah for the information and spend the next twenty minutes engaged in the kind of small talk couples engage in when they are in the early stages of a mutually exciting relationship. Friday night is for James. Saturday is for Sarah. Both are important to me. I look at my watch. I have at least seven hours to kill before James might show up. I don’t feel like running. I’m not tired. I’m restless. What to do? I sit, quiet my mind and wait for an impulse. I call Sarah back, and then drive to Norwich. Why spend seven hours alone? Plans are more pliable, less black and white than they used to be, when I allow it.

It is midnight when I get back to Storrs, and surprise of surprises, James is home. He is watching TV in the living room. From what I can tell he has a low grade heroin high going on, a fact that he would deny to the death if I confronted him on it. It isn’t my intent to challenge him, but rather to observe him. James is happy to see me. He gives me a hug, which he hasn’t done since he was little, and then gently rubs the top of my head.

His speech pattern is different, strained, but not consciously strained, and higher pitched. If you didn’t know James you wouldn’t know he was high. You might think he was odd and overly talkative, but not high. You have to know him to know. He is not the same person straight as the person he is showing me now. This James is talkative to the point of wanting to slam a strip of duct tape over his mouth. I’m not looking for what differentiates the two behaviors. The hug and the pat on the head is a sign. I feel it to be a sweet and caring behavior. He is letting me know without subterfuge that he loves me. It wasn’t a man hug. It was an ‘I love you’ hug.

I ask James why he is so happy. He says that this is his natural self and that what I usually see and interact with is his depressed self. He thinks he is a manic depressive, the popular term being bipolar. I have regular disputes with my colleagues about the frequency of this particular diagnosis. James is not bipolar, but he likes to say he is when he is high. It gives his use legitimacy. I use drugs because I’m not normal…that sort of thing. Until James started using he was the most normal young man I knew. It makes me sad to see his pain. He receives a call from one of his friends. I hear a few bits and pieces. He says he really needs a girl friend, someone to cuddle with. He used that word. He didn’t say he was horney and needed to get laid. He wants to cuddle. How can he not know how loved he is? James finishes his call and gives me another hug. He heads upstairs and to the potential peace that sleep might bring.

James is in the process of allowing highway normal to squeeze him into its two lanes. He’s an off-road kind of person and can’t be driving a four-door sedan through the Sierra Nevada. He’s trying to drive the wrong vehicle and it’s killing him. He’s medicating himself to fit into what he thinks he should be. I envision highway normal with six billion lanes, all responding individually to whatever direction the driver turns the wheel. This is about comparing. When James, and me for that matter, decides to quit comparing ourselves to others highway normal will accommodate us. James may need to rethink his tough guy persona when straight. It isn’t him. Whose influence is he allowing to drive him into a persona that he is not? Maybe it’s not a person. Maybe it’s the culture itself. Some allow a far greater influence than others. Where does the authentic self lie? I don’t know yet, but I am determined to find out. I grab my mug and head off to bed.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Twelve

2010-04-12T06:27:00.001-05:00

I am a colossal horseshoe-shaped magnet. The shape is probably a reminder of my early days when all kid’s magnets were shaped like a horseshoe. It get the impression that whatever I am to glean from this dream began early in my life. Colossal is a relative term, I know. A grain of sand is huge to a microbe. So when I say colossal, this magnet encompassed the universe and more. I am beginning to suspect that who I really am throws out energy in my dreams that my thinking mind translates into a form that I can understand. The forms in my dream are therefore interpretations or symbols, if you like, of a far more literal message. The words I hear and the images I see are abstract. I have to transform the energy and the communication into a form that I can understand. The magnet is a clever symbol. You know what a magnet does. It’s simple. It repels and it attracts.

Where does the authentic self lie? That was my last thought before entering dream land. The first thing the magnet attracts is my frog handled mug. It triggers me into a lucid dream state. There are many things swirling about the magnet, and the things, as best as I can make out, represent attachments. The word itself rings out in my dream…attachments. Anyway, not only does the magnet envelop the universe, it envelops time as well. Time is represented by layer upon layer upon layer of universes above and below the magnet, and yet the magnet is dispersed throughout them all. As the magnet moves from one universe to another some things that are attached to the magnet in one universe are released and other things that are repelled before are drawn to and stick to the magnet. It is clear to me that I am the magnet and that in different times I draw or repel different…things, different attachments that are dependent upon what I am exploring. These attachments are beliefs more than they are things.

When I wake it is clear that somehow my dream represents my genuine self by way of the magnet. Attachments – what it is I believe - come and go dependent upon time and what I am exploring at the time. TIME! How can my experience in this life or a past life or a future life be simultaneous? I feel as though a spigot has opened in my mind and what is pouring out of it comes from a stratum of my being long ago forgotten, but dispersed throughout all time. It does not feel like it is coming from a source other than me. At the same time I don’t feel that my dream is saying that it is only me that is this big. There’s something here that is deeper than I am capable of understanding. My mind as yet cannot create the symbols for it. I am not ready to get it. I decide not to force my understanding, not to oppose my own readiness.

I grab my mug and head downstairs. Rose and Charlie are not yet home. Where does James get the model of manhood that requires emotional detachment, strength, toughness, and machismo that is so not him that by following the model he destroys himself? I think of Charlie. From casual interactions with him he seems balanced to me, a good mix of the feminine and the masculine. I wonder if the feminine is an act, a politically correct form of behavior that allows him to fit in well in a college community. Sarah tells me that the energy one projects is far more telling and influencing than the words spoken. I recall many times when Debra was in a funk. I could feel it, taste it, and yet when I asked she invariably responded by telling me that she was fine. The words were a lie, the energy the truth. I’ve noticed this in myself. I’ve noticed it in everyone. Energy cannot be camouflaged. But I never gave energy much thought. Mr. Rational is at work here. I can’t see it. I can’t feel it and I can’t measure it. It is only my empathy and intuition that picks up on it and yet Sarah can see it. I’ve never really given empathy and intuition much stock. I haven’t given impulses much stock, either. How do you measure a mind, not what’s in it, but the mind itself? I am beginning to think that measuring something limits what it is I want to measure. If I can’t measure it then it doesn’t exist, except as a thought. I feel like I’ve lived my life by the Missouri motto, ‘show me.’ My mind drifts to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

I am awakening, not from a night’s sleep, but from a life of sleepwalking. Why? Is this the rule change I dreamed about? Awakening! Is it just me? No, I’m sure of it. Even James is gripped by it, but in a different way than I am. He is being clobbered. Wake up! Wake up! Why is it different for him? Maybe it is different for all of us. I hear Rose and Charlie pull up. My thoughts turn to them, or is it my attention that turns to them. Another thing to work out, but I am beginning to sense that my attention is far bigger than my thinking.

They look like they had a little too much to drink last night. Rose has dark circles under her eyes and Charlie is lumbering more than usual. I promised myself not to give unsolicited advice, but I was certain they were going to ask for it. They do. I suspect that each of them is showing themselves something about…themselves in their interactions with James. Charlie is getting something different than Rose, and Rose is getting something different than Charlie, and James is getting something different than Rose and Charlie. The dance isn’t about James. The dance is about three individuals, but each has their attention on the others. God, how do I tell them to pay attention to what they are doing, how they are reacting, and to shift it away from James? It goes against the grain. They are so attached…..attached to what? Attached to their beliefs maybe. Something is percolating in that region of my mind that I have as yet not identified. I can feel it so close, like the name of a movie star you know so well but can’t drag to your tongue. Where does that shit hang out, the stuff you know, but in the moment can’t find. The brain as a conduit! Isn’t that what Alexander proposed? So much has changed since then.

Rose is stuck in save-my-child mode. It is her responsibility as a mother. Charlie wants to kick James out of the house. To both, James is the cause of their emotional pain. It makes sense. Cause and effect is the modus operandi of our culture. Hell, a month ago I saw it the same way. I can’t any more. I think of my walk in the park with Sarah and the conversation we had about configuring the energy of another individual. It’s almost as if the energy is saying, ‘do with me as you desire. My love for you is so great I give you my energy to create in the way you see best.’ It’s almost Christian in tone, but without the God, or is it. A love so great…not affection, but love. Something is there. Something that redefines love. A knowing…a knowing that the other is also you…that there is no separation…appreciation. Appreciation of what? How do I appreciate someone who kills, steals, cheats?

A patient of mine is a poster child for the new age stereotype. She believes in unconditional love even for her husband that batters the hell out of her psyche. Her name is Joyce Carmichael and she is so at war with herself over this contradiction. She believes she ‘should’ love everyone unconditionally even those that hurt her. Yet, there is a part of her that hates her husband and for that she judges herself harshly. It has only now occurred to me that it is the definition we have for love that poses the problem. As I understand it all of our definitions of love revolve around affection of varying intensity. Unconditional love cannot work with that definition. We can fake it, but deep down we war against ourselves. Love as knowing and appreciating. Knowing what and appreciating what…the words are there but the ‘what’ is still way too foggy. Maybe it has to do with the reality of who we are and what we are doing here. I don’t know…yet.

I can’t solidify my concepts for Rose and Charlie, but I can put them into an example that they might be able to understand. I tell them about identical twins Hugo and Yugo. They are walking together down Broadway engaged in conversation. I put them in New York because that’s where I live. Approaching them are Huey and Louie, also identical twins. Hugo and Yugo aren’t paying attention to the approach of Huey and Louie, but Huey and Louie notice Hugo and Yugo. Huey and Louie separate to allow Hugo and Yugo to pass between them, but they don’t separate quite enough because Broadway is packed with people.

As Hugo and Yugo pass between Huey and Louie, Hugo brushes Huey’s shoulder and Yugo brushes Louie’s shoulder. Hugo has no reaction, but Yugo goes ballistic and confronts Louie, who is astounded at Yugo’s reaction. What is the difference that created no reaction in Hugo and made Yugo turn rabid? The situation was the same for both. Huey and Louie are twins and so are Hugo and Yugo, so Louie couldn’t have given Yugo a bigger bump than Huey gave Hugo. Each created the same scenario, but each reacted differently. The difference is that Hugo and Yugo have a different film (beliefs) running through their projectors.

Hugo believes that in the moment of the bump that it was unintentional. Yugo, on the other hand, believes people are inconsiderate and self centered in an egocentric kind of way. He reconfigures Louie’s energy just as Hugo configures Huey’s. For Yugo the bump initiates the emotion of anger. Yugo sees no other choice of response. He is on autopilot with an amnesiac for a captain. Yugo’s response is automatic and without thought. He is without freedom, a victim of his own beliefs.

The example works. Rose and Charlie understand that Huey and Louie are not the cause of Hugo and Yugo’s emotional state of mind, but that they are the triggers. A trigger is a release, not a cause. I am convinced, however, that their understanding of the example will not cross over to self-reflection. They are far too conditioned by what they have learned about who they are and the responsibilities they each have as parents. It is a beginning, however. As for me, I am beginning to think that the outer world of things and experience is as abstract as my dreams, and that the communication of the experiences comes from a place that is literal. I am determined to find out the truth.

While James dreams his dreams of torment I pack my bag, say my good-byes to Rose and Charlie and head back down route 32 to Sarah. When I get there Sarah is on the phone. She is visibly upset.

“Alexander is in the hospital,” she said. “They think he has the H1N1 virus. His fever is 103 and his lungs are filling with fluid. Can you drive me, Augusto. I’m too upset to drive myself.”

“Of course I’ll drive you,” I said. By way of encouragement I added, “Remember my dream. He’ll be OK. He’s alive and well in the future.”

That calms her down and we leave ten minutes later. Sarah isn’t a big packer of things like many women are. Debra took three suitcases for a four day vacation in the Bahamas. She used one quarter of the stuff she packed. Sarah and I arrive at New York Presbyterian Hospital three hours later. Alexander looks like hell. He has an IV going and is catheterized, a fact that troubles him more than the illness. I empathize. He tries to downplay the seriousness of his condition for his mother’s sake, but it is clear that it is an effort for him to do so. How typically male. He has a paper due on Monday and asks if I’d inform his professor of his predicament. I assure him I will. Sarah sees his energy and grows more concerned.

“He’s very sick, Augusto. Dream or no dream I’m worried about him.”

I hug Sarah and assure her of the expertise of the hospital staff. New York – Presbyterian is the designated hospital for Columbia. I used it myself for one of my kidney stone adventures. I wince at the memory of that nightmare. The urologist had to go in and retrieve the little hard-ass. If I was a woman I’d join a convent. We stay a few hours and leave when Alexander falls asleep. There is little more we can do by staying. We return to the Eldorado and collapse into my Swedish foam.

I awake at 2am in a sweat, not from the H1N1, but from my dream. I lie there trying to process the import of it. Sarah and I are married and living at the Eldorado. Alexander is not in the picture. There is a constant sadness about Sarah that is not present now. Her sadness is more one of loss than of grief at Alexander’s passing. She misses his touch, his scent, his laughter and his incessant curiosity about life. She understands death as a choice, but cannot understand his decision. It seems so selfish to her. Couldn’t he have stayed just for her? We are celebrating our third wedding anniversary with an intimate candle-lit dinner at home.

Alexander can’t be dead, and yet my dream is so real. He was eighty-two years old in my first dream era dream. As David Cawley I toasted him. As Augusto DeRosa I am part of some project he is doing with David. My mind swirls in a vortex of confusion. What is happening? I don’t waken Sarah, but let her abide in her own dreams, whatever they may be. She wakes early so that she might be there when Alexander wakes up. We take the subway to the hospital. I am in a state of dread. I can’t shake it. The dream is too real. We get to the hospital by 7am and Alexander is awake and better. His temp is normal and he is animated, agitated almost.

“The nurse told me that my temperature spiked to 105 during the night. It was 2am. They woke me, but I don’t remember it. She said I was delirious the whole time because I was talking some gibberish. I remember I was at a crossroad and had to decide whether to live or die. It was as if part of me was finished here, but another wasn’t. When I finally decided which road to take I woke up and my temperature dropped quickly. The nurse told me she never saw a temp drop so fast. Anyway, I feel ready to get back to the grind. I’m glad you guys are together. I think you’re good for each other.”

“I’m glad we’re together, too, Alexander,” I said. “And I’m relieved you remembered what you were going through while in your delirium. I’m going to get a cup of coffee while you and your mother have some alone time. I’ll be back in about half an hour.”

I excuse myself, give Sarah a kiss and head off to be alone with my thoughts or whatever they were. So there is a time and a dimension where Alex dies and Sarah and I go on without him. It was Alex’s choice to die in one probability. That I can understand. But, Sarah and I surely seemed not to have a decision point confronting us. How did we end up participating in Alex’s choice to create a probable that dies, and Sarah and I exist as a childless couple? It was clearly a choice made by Alex, and yet Sarah and I find ourselves in the reality created by his choice. I reflect on my magnet dream where the magnet intersects all universes and all time. The magnet is me. If the magnet is me, then my energy, represented by the magnet, also resides in all time and all space. It is available to all those I interact with to configure in any way they choose. The enormity felt like an exploding brain aneurism. I grab hold of my chair and it happens.

I gasp at the rapture I feel as I become everything around me. I meld with the hospital, the city, the state, the stars, everything. They are me and, yet, not me. Sarah is me and, yet, not me. Alexander is me. Alexander is himself. The experience lasts only a moment, but in that moment I realize that eternity resides in the moment. I am imbedded in a reality so complex, so rich in experience as to defy my description. It would take a poet. I sit there in the cafeteria smiling like an idiot, staring off into a space that only I can discern and yet all participate in. I know then that I am in the midst of a great sea change, a change so great as to make the Renaissance seem like a mere footnote in history.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Thirteen

2010-04-12T06:25:00.000-05:00

A year passes and the world around me changes, not so much physically, but in response to how I have changed. That shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. The world always seems to reflect one’s state of mind if the mind is open enough to notice. To a happy person the world is good. You know the routine. But this is different. Little things that used to send me to the edge, like little old ladies counting pennies from their change purse, don’t even appear. It’s not that they no longer bother me. They simply are no longer there. Before my dream era I was a chronic toe stubber. Once a week I’d cream one of my toes. I used to blame it on the stupid chair or table or stool or whatever it was that got my attention. And that was it. My attention! Once I started paying attention to what I do, I no longer needed to employ the outside world to get my attention for me. I practiced paying attention to what I do and in doing that I learned what I believe. Practicing the little things made the big things less big.

James dropped out of UConn and spent eight weeks in rehab. It worked for a while. The success rate for rehab programs is in the crapper, but it was good to connect with James while it was James I was connecting with. Rose and Charlie are close to breaking up, as they each address the problem from different angles, and neither of them is able to accept the other’s take on how to save James. They are now at the point where they are forced to think about themselves. Being thirty thousand in the hole doesn’t help much. Funny how that works. James and I have talked on a semi regular basis and he is beginning to understand some of the concepts I couldn’t verbalize when this process began. I never offer. James asks.

Sarah and I are tight. Our connection is one of mutual respect and acceptance. Combine that with a deep love and you get a great relationship. I’m beginning to understand my new definition of love…knowing and appreciation. I’ll get to that later. But I love her in the old way as well, and that is why I asked her to marry me. The new definition I apply to everyone. It is the old one that made it easy for me to ask for Sarah’s hand. It never crossed her mind to ask Alexander if he approved. He did, but it would not have mattered. In the one year that has passed, Alex has finished two years of coursework at Columbia. As for my dreams…well that’s another story.

Most of my dreams are lucid and I have my frog handled mug to thank for it. Actually, I have myself to thank for it. I bought the mug and, as I said before, use it as a trigger. The next step will be to awaken in my dream without the trigger, but I’m not ready for that yet. Too many old unbroken habits and a massive lack of trust. I lapse into old thinking that it is a force outside me that has wrought these changes, making me nothing more than a marionette dancing on a master’s string. That’s my old concept of God, and it has very deep roots. Thinking big seems…sacrilegious. It’s not that I don’t believe in God. I do. But, running hand in hand with my own expansion of self is the expansion of my God concept. I figure if I can conceive of a bigger me, a more complex system of reality, then certainly God is bigger also. To be honest, God is probably beyond conception, but as I expand so does God. By the way, I loathe using a pronoun for God, as you may have noticed. It is somehow limiting. And yet, God is all words. So here’s the deal, as my story unfolds I will use both the male and female pronouns when referring to IT…and sometimes the impersonal.

The world is moving close to spring here on the east coast. The days get longer and the air warmer and, as ever, things continue to change. There is no end point as far as I can tell, no point that I need to reach that signals my completion as a human. That was a big ‘catch’ for me. Change and movement and experience are what my life is about now. The realization of it is freeing. I should do this or I should not do that just seems like so much baggage. That is not to say that I never fall back into old patterns. I do. But, I am aware of it when I do and can make a different choice in the next moment. Ever notice how much our language reflects our conception of time…like the word next. Actually, if Alexander’s premise is correct, there is no next, for every next and every before exists now. I haven’t figured out how knowing that helps me now, so I’ll continue to play by the rules of this reality which appears to include sequential time.

It’s Rose calling. It’s never good when she calls. The new phones all have web cams or whatever they are called. I’ll put it in techno-challenged language…Rose and I can see each other.

Rose is crying, but they are happy tears. “Augusto,” she said. “I’ve had an epiphany. It was so real.”

She wipes her eyes and blows her nose. I remind myself to listen and to affirm whatever emotional state she is experiencing. That is much easier to do when she is happy. No advice unless advice is asked for.

“That’s wonderful, Rose. It’s so good to see you happy for a change.” I waited.

“It was in a dream,” she said. “I felt completely accepting of James’ choice to experience life in the way he has chosen. I saw that opposing it actually made it worse. I don’t understand it, but I know that it is real. I understand now that there is nothing for me to save him from.”

Rose let go of all the energy she has stored over the past years and a flood of salty tears course down her cheeks. I wonder if and how her strong religious beliefs played into this, but I didn’t ask. I waited.

“I saw myself as Jesus,” She said. “And it was Jesus as me just looking at James with such love and acceptance and understanding. No judgment at all. I saw through all my beliefs about right and wrong. It was all love, but not as much a love of affection, but something different. Something larger, deeper. James was Jesus experiencing himself as James. It was as if everything is connected, woven into an intricate fabric and it is only our judgment that disallows the fabric from mending itself. Oh, Augusto, it was so wonderful.”

I wait. It is no surprise to me that any epiphany Rose has would have included Jesus. He is her trigger, as my frog handled mug is mine. My joy for her expresses itself in a flood of my own tears.

“Don’t cry, Augusto. This is a good thing. I went into his room this morning and just sat, watching him sleep and breathe and be. He is beautiful and brave. I so appreciate what he has chosen to explore. It can’t be easy for him. I had so hoped he could find Jesus and all along he had.”

I recall Jung’s quote, “We forget to make real the profound meaning in ourselves…” I realize then that there is no right or wrong way of doing that, other than not struggling against what is. I keep my thoughts to myself. They are mine and only valid for me. Who am I to judge another’s choice? What a difference a year makes.

“What do you think this all means, Augusto?” Rose asks.

“I know what it means to me, Rose. Only you can discern what it means to you.”

“Then tell me what it means to you. I value your perception of things even though you have chosen to keep God at arm’s length. No matter.”

A year ago I would have defended myself, but I have learned that the act of defending is actually a form of non-acceptance of self. Think about it. If I am good with myself then what is there to defend? I don’t need to convince my accuser that his perception is wrong. It’s not…for him. Rose’s perception is as valid for her as mine is for me. I pause for a moment before answering her. I need to couch my answer in a way that it reflects me. I don’t want to pontificate on what it should mean to Rose.

“Augusto?”

“Sorry, Rose. I was thinking. What your epiphany means to me is a validation of where I have moved to over the past many months.”

“How so?” Rose asked. “You don’t believe in Jesus.”

“I believe in what he represents to me, and in many ways it is similar to what he represents to you. Love, acceptance, making real in my life what he made real in his. He is an example…a big one, but an example nevertheless.” I can feel Rose wanting to interrupt. “But hear me out, Rose. I no more view my understanding of Jesus as truth as I view ‘thou shalt not kill’ as truth. They are my truths and that is all. So in my perception of you and your epiphany the validation lies in the fact that no matter what our individual truths, those truths will prevail for each of us. Trust will win out.”

“But…”

“No buts,” I said. “I’m not arguing my position. I’m as comfortable in my understanding as you are in yours. The paradox is that we are both right, and yet… we are both wrong at the same time. I am happy with you in your joy. It matters not how you achieved it. You did.”

“What do you think will happen now?” Rose asked.

“I don’t know, Rose. What I do know is that I cannot change another individual. It will be up to James. He will make his next choice for his own benefit, not your or mine. Your new found acceptance of him may be an influence for change. It may not. What I am beginning to understand is that in opposing his choices we have made him dig in his heels. By judging his choices we are saying that we know better than he how he should direct his life. Jesus has shown you this. It matters not whether he is the son of God or not, although to you it does. You trust that, and that is what is important.”

Rose turns her head away from the phone. “I heard James rustling about upstairs. I want to go and give him a big hug. It will be the first one in a long time that I give freely and without reservation. Thanks for listening, Augusto. You’re a good brother. Give Sarah a big hug for me.”

I call Sarah, thinking how grateful I am for these new video phones. She’s walking in the woods with her Old English Bulldog, Maggie. I love the beast, but if you could measure a dog’s IQ, Maggie would be a forty where 100 is normal. She makes me crazy. Sarah told me the story of a friend of her’s dog sitting for a week while she vacationed in North Carolina. I think the guys name is Tom, not that it matters. Anyway, he told her that he would have Maggie fully trained by the time she returned. Maggie was about a year old at the time. Sarah laughed at his promise. She knew her dog. The first thing Tom said when she returned was that he had never met such a stupid dog. His training didn’t take. Sarah likes retelling that story.

“Hi handsome,” she said, and then scanned the woods around her. The trees have yet to bud, but the time is close. Maggie is ten yards in front of Sarah and is completely present in the moment. That’s a great thing about animals. They know how to be present. In our hubris we never seem to get that lesson from them. I think that’s changing, though.

“Turn the camera back to you,” I said. “I miss your pretty face. Thank you. I was thinking about taking a little get-a-way. Spring break is coming up and the Caribbean sounds inviting.”

“I’d have to get a sitter for Maggie,” she said. “Alexander is staying in New York with a friend. Says he can’t leave a project he’s working on. Won’t tell me what it is.”

“Ask Tom,” I said, chuckling.

Sarah laughed. I love hearing her laugh. I love hearing anybody laugh. “I would,” she said. “Except he has early stage Alzheimer’s. His friend, Bill…I don’t think you met him…has moved in with him. They make a cute couple. Both are as gay as can be and very much devoted to each other. Bill is the cuter of the two and Tom is tougher. They look like a couple of elves together. I love hanging out with them. They’re like the Odd Couple only smaller. Tom looks like Oscar, just like you look like Ben.”

“Better Ben, than Oscar,” I said. Sarah sees my big toothy smile and laughs. “So is it a go for the Caribbean?”

“It’s a go,” she said. “But do me a favor, Augusto. Buy a new bathing suit. That Speedo of yours is just too much for my eyes to bear. You look better bare ass than you do in that red Speedo. Promise?”

I thought I looked pretty good in that Speedo, but since it really wasn’t important to me I promised. Maybe a California surfer suit like in the sixties will suit me better. Sarah said that would be just fine with her, anything would be better than the Speedo. She refers to it as a meat hanger. Sarah could be crass at times, and it wasn’t dependent on the situation. She could be at a State dinner or a biker bar. It didn’t matter to her. I have to let go of my tendency to think people judge me for her form of speech. Screw ‘em. Sarah is great fun and has taught me a lot about what I believe, not in words, but by triggering me.

I end the call and remember I promised to call Alexander this morning. Something about the project he is working on. I auto-dialed his number.

“Thanks for calling, Augusto,” he said.

I like that he dropped the Dr. DeRosa bit. It seems ridiculous under the circumstances. “Good morning, Alex. What’s going on? What’s this project you’re working on?”

“It has nothing to do with any of my course work. It wouldn’t be approved,” he said. “It has to do with expectations influencing outcomes. I remember you said something about that and I’d like you to tell me again. It’s not clear.”

“It’s pretty simple, really,” I said. “There are two forms of expectations. One involves the expectation of an outcome and the other is involved with the process of getting to the outcome. Both involve trust, absolute trust that you will create what it is you want. Are you with me so far?” I could see Alex taking notes.

“I’m with you,” he said.

“The trust involves the outcome that you will create what it is you want. It is the process of getting to the outcome that trip us up. We have expectations regarding what the process should look like. If the process goes against our expectations it destroys the trust that we will create the outcome we want. Let me give you an example.

“A few weeks ago I decided to get your mother a frog handled mug just like mine. I had no doubt that I would find one. I went to the store where I bought mine without any expectation that there would be another one just like mine. There were two when I bought mine a year ago. There weren’t any left. A couple years ago I would have given up my search then and there. Finding that same mug would have been like finding a finding a flea on an Angora cat. Not finding the last one in the same store would have destroyed trust in the outcome.

“But, a week ago, by not having any expectations regarding the process of finding the same mug, not finding it at the same store I bought it from didn’t destroy my trust in eventually finding it. So I left the ceramic store and went to Central Park where all the arts and crafts carts are. Five minutes later I had the mug. Not having expectation regarding process also involves time. I didn’t put a time frame on finding it. Had I done that, and the process not meeting my time limit I again would have lost trust in finding it. Time, therefore is involved in the process. In a nutshell the concept goes, expect the outcome with complete trust, but do not hold expectations regarding how and when it will appear. Make sense?”

“Makes sense,” Alex said. “It was the time thing that confused me. How long do I wait?”

“As long as it takes.”

“Sounds like you need a lot of patience if it doesn’t show up for a long time.”

“Time is the Catch 22. Do you know what that means?”

“Yeah, Mom had me read the book when I was little.”

“Expectations regarding time, which involves the process, destroys trust in the outcome, which in turn can further delay the outcome.”

“So how do you get around that?” Alex asked.

“By knowing that you already have what it is you want. Remember, all time is simultaneous. The reality is that you already have it. The present alters the past and the future, just as the future alters the present and past, just as the past alters the present and future. There is only now. Allowance, not patience is the ticket. Capiche?

“Capiche. Thanks, Augusto. I have to go. Mom is calling.”

“Hey Alex. Tell your mom you like my Speedo so much you want one for yourself. Trust me. Just do it. OK?”

“I hate your Speedo, but I’ll tell her. It’s an inside joke I guess.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “She’ll fill you in on what it’s about. Talk to you later.”

I end the call and have a chuckle imagining their conversation. Life’s good when you no longer feel you’re a victim of anything. It’s also a challenge knowing I’m responsible for it all. It gets you and God off my hook. It gets the law of cause and effect off my hook. Not really, as I am the cause of all of my effects. The trick for me has been getting myself off my own hook. What I mean by that is not judging myself when I screw up…especially when there are no screw-ups. There are things I create that I do not like, but there is beauty in knowing that it is I who can change it as long as I do not struggle against what I don’t like. I’m getting well practiced at lessening the importance of what I don’t like. That’s important…just joking.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Fourteen

2010-04-12T06:24:00.000-05:00

Nothing exists in isolation including everything in this story. In the dream that started my journey Julia was wearing a T-shirt that had ‘Shifted 2069’ printed on each sleeve. It meant nothing to me at the time. I didn’t wonder about it. I didn’t think about it. I should have known better. Everything about a dream is significant, maybe not in the moment, but when it is revisited details tend to pop out. I’ve written down all of my dreams since that first life changer appeared. It was about six months after the first that I saw it lying on the table next to David Cawley. I suspect he communicates to me in this way. He arranges his living space for me to see clues. Why he doesn’t just spit it out I have not figured out. It was a book. It was written by David Cawley, and so I guess by me as well…sort of. Its title was merely a span of time…1900-2075. The subtitle read, The History of the Shift. What the hell is the Shift, and if it began in 1900 why haven’t I heard of it?

I Googled The Shift and for the next several days I astounded myself. At the time, 2010, it was just a small fringe group of people that had any conscious awareness of it. Why did it take a hundred years for these guys to become aware of it? Why didn’t I know about it? It is probably why the people of France and Europe didn’t know they were involved in the Renaissance until they were well into it. The people alive at the beginning of the Renaissance were long dead by the end of it. Three hundred years is a long time. I don’t even know when it was given a name, but I am sure it wasn’t dubbed the Renaissance by the people alive at the beginning of it.

According to David’s title this shift thing spans one hundred seventy five years. We are already two thirds of the way into it and virtually no one has heard of it yet. There was a lot to go through, much of heavily laced with current beliefs. What I got from my reading was this. We are in the midst of a reality rule change just as my baseball dream portended. So I did know, but I thought I was the only one. I guess I’m not so special after all. The past hundred and ten years have been special, however. We grew wings and we left the planet, but basic flight is based on classical physics that had been around since before Newton and Descartes. Certainty was dethroned in favor of probability at the beginning of the twentieth century when quantum physics was born. Everything changed after that. Everything grew increasingly connected by way of an invisible electronic web. I know what is going on in Egypt sometimes faster than the Egyptians do. So, like those in the Renaissance I exist in a great change, but unlike the Renaissance, which was a cultural change, the Shift is about a reality change. Who, but God, could evoke such a change?

Just as David Cawley is me and not me, I think the rule changer is God and not God. It’s that free will thing. Increasingly my universe is filling with paradox, and is infinitely more complex than I had heretofore imagined. But why change things now? What is it about the past hundred thousand years of human existence that requires a change in how we relate to our reality? I spent hours pondering that question and it dawned on me that doing the same thing for 100,000 years might get a wee bit boring. I’m not kidding. That’s what I came up with and here’s why. If it is true that I have countless selves dispersed throughout time, and that those countless selves each create probables, and the probables who are real in their own right create their own probables, and so on, then what the hell else could there be left to experience under the current games rules. I’d want to play a different game and I suppose God would also. But, what is the new rule?

Rose chooses a personal God, a hands-on kind of God. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s her choice and it serves her. My God is diffuse, non-religious and woven into the fabric of all that exists. She is me and not me, just as I am her and not her. I am autonomous and yet inextricably connected to all that is. I felt that when Alexander created a probable during his illness and I experienced myself as everything. Somehow I feel responsible for spreading the word. Jung’s words again pop into my mind. He wrote in Mysterium Coniunctionis, “The wise man who is not heeded is counted a fool, and the fool who proclaims the general folly first and loudest passes for a prophet and Fuhrer, and sometimes it is luckily the other way round as well, or else mankind would long since have perished of stupidity.” I don’t know if I am wise or a fool, but I’m sure as hell not going to jump on any podium. I have enough problems without the world judging me as either wise or foolish. I’ll leave that target on the backs of the politicians.

David Cawley the younger is doing well after a year of weekly visits. For lack of a better word, his mother is flabbergasted by the change in him. By reducing the times she opposed him she found that there were fewer incidents where she felt a need to oppose him. In other words they stopped butting heads because she stopped judging his opposition. His mother began seeing young David Cawley not as a tabula rasa that she was responsible for molding into an image she felt would be best suited to the world, but rather as a young person that had a clear idea of his own wants and desires. So things are settling down with the two of them. I have a plan for young David Cawley which requires keeping contact with him for many years. I plan on having him give a message to his future son…my future self. It’s weird, I know, but this reality is becoming weirder by the day.

My world in general has become a more dangerous place to live. The year 2010 was particularly onerous, especially regarding Islamic terrorism. I read the Koran to get some insight into interpretations people place on Mohammed’s words. I found that it is just as easy to put a spin on the Koran as it is for the Bible. People will believe what it is they want to believe, and, as I am quickly learning, what is primary is the individual’s belief driven perception. Although it appears so there is no ‘The Reality’ that is simply perceived differently by each individual. Anyway there is one Sura in the Koran that caught my attention. It is the 18th. I found it telling regarding my search for the real me, the me that is David Cawley and Dr. Smythe and all the others that have appeared to me over the past two years. It helped me to trust all that I create, especially those things that I have considered counter productive to my development as a human being.

The story involves Moses and the guiding angel, Khidr. The two are traveling together and come upon a small village. To Moses’ horror, Khidr sinks all the boats in the bay. Moses regards this as an evil, but later learns that there were robbers about that were ready to steal all the boats. By sinking them Khidr saved them for the villagers, who quickly repaired them. Khidr then attacks a young man and kills him. This evil again shocks Moses, who later learns that the man was about to murder his parents and that it was better for him to die at the hands of Khidr than to become his parent’s murderer. The last straw is when Khidr has a wall collapse in the village. As per his habit, Moses is again shocked at this evil. Only later is it discovered that the collapsed wall unearthed a hidden treasure for two orphans. Khidr is forced to leave Moses as he cannot see through the hidden reasoning behind the momentary acts of apparent evil. Here Khidr has the larger viewpoint of the Self, the dandelion of Sarah and the magnet of my dream. Moses is stuck in the smaller view of the ego, the view most of us take in coming to our judgments of good and bad. What the story intimates, but does not explicitly say is that both Moses and Khidr represent aspects of each individual. In 2010 we still agree with Moses’ perspective, but that is changing. Somehow we are being forced to see through the apparent evil by placing it before us. And so my hunt continues.

I’ve pondered many things since my dream era began. Hierarchies are one of them. Why was I so enamored of hierarchies? I see everything as connected now, and no longer believe that one individual is any further along than any other. Hierarchies are another one of those things that didn’t make any sense to me in light of my being many mes in one. You know how it goes. Jon is good and Sally is better, but Paul is the best. Lou is bad. Sue is worse, but Mary is the worst. Father Tim is holy. Cardinal Bernard is holier, but the Dali Lama is the holiest. These types of comparisons are based in part on my understanding of who I am and why I am here. It is unavoidable under the old rules. They are mostly ethical comparisons based on subtle and not so subtle religious beliefs, but more importantly they are rooted in my assumptions that who I see in the mirror represents the totality of who I am. Not any more.

That you are holier than me is also based on my old conception of time and my limited understanding of soul. Because of my old understanding of time I believed I had to be better in the next moment than I was in the present moment. The difficulty with this thinking is that I was infrequently satisfied with who I am in the present moment. I focused on the goal and ignored the process of getting there, which threw me right out of the present moment. I found in doing that I lost my power.

It was my idea of one soul, one self that pushed me to compare. Nelson Mandela, in his inaugural address as the first black President of South Africa, said that our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. In looking back I had locked myself in such a small windowless box for so long that I forgot that I have the key to unlock it. But, again, that forgetting may have been part of the rule that is now changing. Plato, in his great work, “The Republic,” asked: “Will not a man who has seen nothing but the shadows of reality, not feel fear when exposed to the light?” I have thought small for so long it seems like the height of hubris to say “I AM BIG!” I feel like ducking when I say it.

Young Cawley is a cornucopia of ‘what-ifs.’ He makes me think of all my own what ifs that have popped into my mind since the dream era. What if, as consciousness experiencing itself as matter, there is no holy purpose to life other than the mere experience of it. What if the me that I see in the mirror is just one manifestation of a larger me? Just as the me that I was at five is still a part of the me that I am at sixty-five, the me I see in the mirror is but a part and yet the whole at the same time of a larger gestalt called soul. It’s not my soul. I am soul. I am sinner and saint; beggar and rich, beautiful and ugly, and powerful and weak.

What if everything is spiritual, but not by way of the old definition. The heroin addict shooting-up in an alley is on equal footing with the Dali Lama. No hierarchies. The healer is no more spiritual than the leper she heals. There is nothing I need to be other than who I am now. I don’t need fixing and neither does my neighbor. Move, change, experience, but accept without judgment who I am in each moment. I am already the holiest. Old habits die hard. I look around when I write this waiting for the ceiling to fall on me. These are all thorny nuts to swallow, but I seem to be cramming them down my throat.

That’s my little ‘catch-up.’ Now it’s back to the present.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Fifteen

2010-04-12T06:22:00.002-05:00

Alexander Hastings has a photographic memory and so I decide to include him early in my plan. From that first dream I believed that David Cawley initiated my dream era, but I was thinking in terms hierarchies. He is more advanced and more capable of projecting his consciousness into the past than I was in projecting my consciousness into the future, or at least I assumed he was. Once I learned about this shift thing I knew I had a living link to myself in the future in the form of Alexander Hastings and David Cawley the younger. I could actually deliver a message physically to David Cawley through Alexander Hastings and David Cawley the younger, his father. In that way it would be me that initiated everything even though it is all simultaneous.

I dialed Alex.

“Good Morning, Augusto,” he said. “What’s on your mind…other than you and mom going to St. Martin in a week?”

“Time is on my mind, Alex. I’m in the mood to play with it and I need your memory to do it. I also have to fill you in on many things that I haven’t told you yet.” I bring Alex up to date on everything except for his winning the Nobel Prize. That’s too much pressure to my mind. I tell Alex I saw him at the University of Connecticut as a professor of physics and that he would eventually meet David Cawley. I don’t tell him that David is a future me. I give Alex the age difference between him and David and tell him that they will meet before the year 2075, possibly many years before that.

“That’s quite a story, Augusto. I love it. What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to tell David that on the morning of August 24, 2075 he needs to be sitting at his kitchen table sipping coffee from a frog handled mug. He needs to tell his wife, Julia, to wear her ‘Shifted 2069’ T-shirt to bed the night before. While he is in the kitchen he has to turn and look at the calendar then go to the bathroom and look in the mirror. Julia then is to walk into the bathroom and hug David. Tell David to look into the mirror and say, ‘what do you believe, Augusto.’ I’ll write this all down for you, Alex. Can you do it?”

“Sure I can do it,” he said, as though remembering these instructions and carrying them out over sixty years later is no more difficult than recalling my name.

I thank him and end the call. I turn on CNN and catch up on the events of the day. Craziness is the best way to explain it. After the 2010 elections people have pretty much lost faith in the government. Even Obama’s favorable numbers are way down, in no small part due to the quagmire in Afghanistan and the insurance industry’s continued dominance of the health care industry. Nothing is black and white. The complexities of the world have become so knotted that no single action can ever untangle the mess. One of the bits on CNN is about individualism. It is a different kind of individualism and I’m not sure than anyone notices that. It’s not the individualism where some hermit traipses into the woods and becomes self sufficient without regard for anyone else. The individualism being portrayed is more a self sufficiency that takes others into account. People are depending less and less on the government to care for them. I think that if everyone does that there will be no need for governments. The key ingredient would be a deep understanding of the interconnectedness of all things. Enough already.

The rest of the day unfolds as most of my days do. No drama, no conflict, just steady state. Hell, if it was not for the drama and the conflict I’d die of boredom. Never thought of that before. I must not have shut off the spigot all the way. Honestly, though, without all of my emotions life would be a colorless gray palate of sameness, no different than the curse of the lobotomized. What a bad timing of birth to be of age in the fifties when drooling was preferable over unusual states of mind. Of course there are times I’d prefer calm over drama, but then I’m seeing it more through the eyes of Moses. I need to practice the Khidr thing. I think I am Khidr. I think we are all Khidr. I need to experience him and get him out of the realm of concept.

I look at the clock sitting above the TV like a sentinel. It’s 11pm. I’m taking the clock down tomorrow. I just decided. I stopped running with a watch shortly after my dream era began. It was a symbolic thing. The removal of the clock over the TV will be both symbolic and aesthetic. It’s a grotesque artsy thing Debra gave me shortly after we began dating. I’ll drop it off at Goodwill. I’m sure someone will appreciate it. It’s funny. A few years ago I would have thrown it in the trash. I feel odd as I head to bed, mug in hand. It’s hard to describe. Almost like an antennae must feel as signals course through it. Nothing intense. Subtle.

The feeling continues as I lie down. I hear a high pitched ringing in my ears and snap my head in a feeble attempt to clear it. The noise varies in tone like a primitive harp. It is more a communication than an annoyance. Snapping my head actually makes the feeling of it almost pleasurable. I snap my head again and I am out of my body. Hearing about it and reading about it and experiencing it are as different as hearing about the pain of a kidney stone and experiencing the birth of one. It takes my breath away even though I am no longer in my body. Damn, talk about an electric Kool-Aid acid trip. I look at my body that is now in what appears to be a meditative state even though I did not intentionally induce it. Now, you see, this is where I get tripped up.

If there are no accidents, if there are no coincidences and if there are no victims, then no thing and no person did this to me. I did it. IT is not a thank-you-God thing…for me. For Rose it would be. I am doing it because I choose to do it. What part of me chooses if it is not my thinking? I’m going to figure that out before this story is over. Now, back to my ghost body. It has the same form as my solid body, but it’s semi-transparent. This, I am sure, is based on what I believe about such things. So I decide to see if I can go through walls, and sure enough I glide right through. This is fun. I can also fly. I get brave and fly through my window twenty stories up. How fast can I go? Speed of light maybe, or as that French Guy Alain Aspect showed, I can get to where I want to go instantly. How, though? I thought about Sarah and I was in her house. Granted, light would reach her in less time than one flap of a humming bird’s wings, but I was there instantly. I watch her sleep for a few moments thinking all the while how lovely a person she is.

I am showing myself something by doing this. It’s the greatest Disney ride in the world, but I know it is more than that. I am showing myself my potential. I am breaking my own internal barriers created by everything I have learned about me as a human. I gaze out Sarah’s window and see the moon. The man in the moon is me. I am there, hovering above the flag planted by Neil Armstrong in 1969. It’s dusty, but none the worse for wear. Enough for one night. I am back in my body and the lights are out, which is to say I am asleep.

A few hours later I see my frog handled mug and I wake up in a dream. It’s really pathetic when my dream life is more interesting than my waking life. I’ll need to do something about that, but sans the drama. I am David Cawley again and am walking down a hallway in a college classroom building. I assume it is the University of Connecticut. David is younger than he was in my first dream. He knocks on the door and enters. Behind a large oak desk sits Alex…excuse me… Dr. Alexander Hastings. He’s old, maybe about sixty or so. I can’t tell for sure as I can for David Cawley. The rational me kicks in. There is a calendar on his desk. It’s 2067. Alex is seventy-five and looking fifteen years younger. The hearing aids are already in his ears. I guess they haven’t corrected hearing loss yet. Alex invites David Cawley to sit.

“It’s an honor to meet you, Dr. Hastings,” David says. “Your work has been instrumental in moving the Shift toward completion. Thank you for that.”

“As you well know, Dr. Cawley, we are all involved in that process. I wanted to welcome you to the University and to talk with you about a promise I made over half a century ago to one of your many focuses.”

“You must be speaking of Augusto,” David said. “He is the only focus of mine that was alive during your lifetime. I feel his influence in many ways, more so than any of my other focuses.”

“How many do you have, David?”

“957.”

Alex nods his head and flashes an impish grin. I suspect that he has thousands of focuses. It never occurred to me that David Cawley knew about me before 2075. There is much that never occurred to me.

“I was a student at Columbia when Augusto first had contact with you. That was in 2009 for him and 2075 for you.” Alex said.

Alex and David chuckle, at what I do not know.

“You toppled his world, David.” Alex wiped a tear from his eye he was laughing so hard. “Reflecting back it is easy to understand why. Everything he believed was put under attack by your nocturnal visit. The promise I made to him involves that visit.”

“Why tell me now?” David asked.

“I’m seventy-four. Although I sense I will live a long life I may choose differently. I am telling you now just in case.”

Alex handed an envelope to David Cawley.

“I wrote it down for you. Not everyone has my memory. Did you know that Augusto married my mother?”

“No,” David replied. “There is still much I don’t know about him.”

“I understand you are writing a history of the Shift. You history people are gluttons for punishment.”

“How so?” David asked.

“You know the mantra, David,” Alex chuckled. “The present affects the past and the future. The past affects the present and the future, and the future affects the past and the present. It all makes for a most fluid present, wouldn’t you say.”

“Thanks to you we know all that,” David said. He sees Alex raise an eyebrow. “Better put, thanks to you we believe it. You proved it.”

“Augusto knew your father. Did you know that?”

“No. My father never mentioned it.”

“He will,” Alex said. “He made a promise just as I did.”

“My father’s not well,” David said. “I think he is in transition. Maybe I should ask him.”

“Maybe you should,” Alex said. “I know it was important to Augusto, but he never told me what he was going to have your father say or do.”

David squirms in his chair and quiets himself. He closes his eyes and breathes deeply.

“I think he’s here in a dream,” David said. “I’ll wager he will call you when he wakes up and tell you what he wanted my father to tell me.”

“You’re right David. He will,” Alex replied. I see a glint in his eye and a sly smile come across his face. He’s quite the elf. “Now tell me, David, how would this conversation be written in the history books? You know darn well that within simultaneous time our conversation will play out differently once Augusto tells me what your father is to tell you.”

“Maybe he won’t tell you,” David said.

“Oh, he will. Trust me. He won’t want to chance that your father will transition out before his message is passed. What Augusto doesn’t realize is that it really doesn’t matter. He still thinks in linear time. No matter. I must be going now, David. I have another appointment. I hope we can develop a friendship. We have shared many focuses together.”

They embrace and I wake up.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Sixteen

2010-04-12T06:21:00.001-05:00

If change is what consciousness seeks then change is what I will give it. Like most folks I struggle against change. It makes me uncomfortable. Why, I can’t say. But I figure if I am the captain of my ship then I am going to man the helm. I have lived too many years on auto pilot. Since my dream era began I feel like a feather bobbing on the surface of a turbulent sea. Augusto DeRosa has decided that from this moment forward he will act as the sea itself. I will be as tenacious as Bruce Willis in Armageddon drilling that hole to its designated depth. I plan to skip the part where he blows himself up.

Alex was right. I call him first thing in the morning. He is one of those kids that don’t fit the young adult sleep pattern. He is an early riser. The sun peeks over the horizon and Alexander Hastings throws off his bed covers. It is 7am when I call and Alex picks up on the first buzz. That vibrate mode on phones is an interesting invention. It specifically had the younger generation in mind. I don’t know how to turn mine on.

“Cock-a-doodle-do,” Alex said. He’s an egghead with a sophisticated sense of humor. “What’s up, Augusto?”

“When you give the message to David Cawley I want you to add something. Tell him that Augusto is not going to write the book, Addiction as Choice. Tell him that the book I am going to write will be called The Frog Handled Mug. Will you remember?”

“Is it cold in January?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I forgot.”

“Anything else, or is that it for today.”

“Smart ass,” I said. Alex knows that I care deeply for him and has figured out the energy I project as it relates to the words I speak. I say goody-bye and close my phone.

I don’t want to write Addiction as Choice. I am writing about what is happening to me, if for no other reason than to serve as a journal of a mind gone mad…if, in fact that is what is happening. Maybe I’m in the early stages of some form of brain rot. I don’t feel insane, but then I have only shared these experiences with the people that have been involved with them. If I was to open up to my colleagues in the Psychology Department they would ship me off to the funny farm, Leroy Quimby in particular. He is the head of the department. His mind is so ancient in its thinking that he blows dust whenever he sneezes. He still likes Freud, for Christ’s sake, and considers Jung a mystic and a heretic. Now you know why changing the psych curriculum is akin to sucking an egg through a pin hole in the shell. Leroy also has no sense of humor. I have to explain the punch lines of the jokes I tell him. I haven’t told him a joke in five years now. It’s no wonder the public thinks that psychologists are the nuttiest of all. Quimby probably thinks that of me.

I know what you’re thinking. Addiction as Choice is already present in the future, which, by way of reminder, is now. I know this is mind warping stuff because it has warped my own mind…as in expanded it in a twisted sort of way. The present affects the past and the future. Nothing is certain to a point to one. Everything is connected and there is plenty of space/time to accommodate it all. If you don’t believe me, look it up. It’s there… somewhere. I wonder if Addiction as Choice and The Frog Handled Mug both exist in a future that is made by my probables. After all, the writing of this book required a pretty big decision. Or, by influencing ‘my’ time line into the future does my future change by having The Frog Handled Mug appear on David Cawley’s table instead of Addiction as Choice. It occurred to me that this stuff is right down Sarah’s professional alley. We’ll talk about it on the beaches of St. Martin.

My phone rings at 8:30am. It is Barbara Johanson, the mother of my patient of several years Elizabeth Johanson. Liz and I became close, as close as a psychotherapist and a patient could get without stepping over the boundary. I open the phone and take the call.

“Dr. Derosa,” Barbara began. “Elizabeth is…is…no longer with us.” She brakes down and sobs into her cell. I let her gather herself, while I gather my self. “She didn’t go to work yesterday, saying she was feeling ill. She looked well enough to be left alone and so I went off to work.”

As she approaches the details of Elizabeth’s death she brakes down again, and like most of us she says she is sorry, as if I was being inconvenienced by her grief. She goes on to tell me that she found Liz in her bedroom with the gun still in her hand. What a horror for a mother! Suicide is far worse than death by accident. I console her as best I can, knowing there is no consolation and that she needs to spend time in the depths of her own grief. I promise I will be at the services two days hence.

Liz took her life at twenty-four. From all outward appearances she had everything going for her, a great job on Madison Avenue, good looks, good family, a real American dream kind of life for a young woman. I started seeing her when she was seventeen and a freshman at Columbia. She was referred to me by a counselor at student services who sensed some self destructive tendencies. Cutting to the chase, Liz loathed who she was. She was uncomfortable in her own skin and in her own mind. We made progress together, but still she twice tried to take her own life. The practical wisdom is that women attempt and men do. Liz’s second attempt was her most serious, an overdose of her mother’s barbiturates nearly did the trick. I was at her bedside when she returned from the River Styx. I remember our conversation vividly.

“Welcome back,” I said. Her hand was small and soft like the rest of her. I held it in my own and cried over the torment I knew she dwelled within. Her voice was weak, but lucid.

“I was dead,” she said. “And you know what, Augusto? Death is a choice. Nothing has ever been so clear to me.”

I sat mesmerized by her story. I remember thinking how powerful brain chemistry can be at the moment of death, while at the same time feeling that her experience was more than a simple or even a complex chemical reaction.

“I felt myself slip into a place of calm,” Liz said, “a place where it didn’t seem to matter whether I chose to live or die. Both were ok. I chose to live for some reason, but I swear to God, Augusto, I chose. No one chose for me. I knew in that moment that all death is a choice, that in the very moment where I hovered between life and death I make a choice. I think we all make that choice.”

Liz was twenty then, and despite all her pain she touched me and everyone else in her life. I know now that in the moment of that choice there was a Liz Johanson that died and a Liz Johanson that lived, just as in Schrödinger’s cat in the box thought experiment the cat existed in both a live and dead state until the box was opened. A choice had to be made. There’s that damn word again…choice. Who the hell is it that chooses when what happens to me doesn’t appear to be something I have chosen.

I think of Khidr and understand that he is as aspect of me, not some distant guru pulling the strings some of the time, but not all the time. He is a facet of the boat owners whose boats he sunk. He is a facet of the young man he murdered and a facet of all the town citizens who were affected by the collapsed wall. But where does he hide and why does he hide? Has he been a part of the rules that governed us prior to 1900? Did the old rule mandate that I would never be aware of the chooser? I think so. I think I’m on to something here. I was a firm believer in accidents, coincidences and victim hood before my dream era. I feel like Rip Van Winkle must have felt when he awakened from a twenty year coma…dazed, confused and awe struck.

Elizabeth only knew Khidr at the moment of her death, twice. For her the chooser entered conscious awareness only at that singular moment. To me the chooser always seemed to be that part of me that thinks, the part we all refer to as consciousness. But it can’t be if we are all the masters of our own ship. We either choose all the time or not at all, and I know the latter is not true. Rose calls the chooser God, but to her the reference abdicates her own throne. In one way or another I am like Rose. I can’t deny it. If I believe in coincidences, accident, luck and all words similar in their connotation of loss of power then I am like Rose. I may not call the chooser God, but it is something or someone or some force outside my self.

Is Khidr me or is he Sarah’s dandelion and my magnate? I don’t think Khidr is either. I feel he is an aspect of Augusto DeRosa that has lain dormant in my unconscious like old Rip, just following the rules of the game. This is my thinking on it…as of this now. My tendency, based on my habitual belief that I am a separate being, is to see the dandelion and the magnate like Rose sees God. Maybe my various conceptions of God are actually symbolic windows peering into who I am individually and collectively. The real God, whether personal or impersonal, is beyond thought. He is all that is, but more. The key, I think, lies in the Biblical thing about free will. I either have it or I don’t. I’m beginning to think that I do.

The rule change has awakened the Khidr in me, but he was only asleep because at some level I abide by the rules and choose to keep him in slumber land. Wait…I’m working my way through this. Khidr was not asleep. He is always active in me, always choosing, but without my conscious awareness. I am becoming aware. So Khidr is an aspect of Augusto, but is not the me that has hundreds, maybe thousands of focuses of attention. I don’t feel my connection yet with that larger me. I don’t feel my connection yet with David Cawley or Dr. Smythe or any of the others except for my feeling that they are me. Who I am is the magnet or the dandelion, whichever you prefer, but I have as yet to experience it. Without the experience it is all concept, all just mind shit.

I recall a conversation with Alex. He was telling me about holograms and how unique they are. A hologram is how Princess Leia’s projected form appeared to Luke Skywalker and Obe Wan Kenobi in Star wars. I’ll try to simplify it as Alex did. Since each point in Princess Leia’s hologram contains light from the whole, then in principle, the whole hologram of Leia can be reconstructed from an arbitrarily small part of the hologram. In other words I would be able to see all of Princess Leia from any small point of light. The only thing that suffers is the resolution. I felt that to be a pretty good metaphor for my relationship to God. I am a point of light in the hologram that is God. God can be seen in me, but not to her fullest resolution.

This isn’t the whole story and I don’t think the whole story is a finished product. Like my life, it shape shifts. The Hindu’s had the concept of the hologram nine thousand years ago. It is told in the story of a net of Gems that hangs over the house of Indra. He is one of the head honcho Gods in the Rigveda. Anyway, at each facet of this net there hangs a gem. The net is hung in such a way that in each gem all the others are reflected. In the one can be seen the whole, that sort of thing. Different times, different metaphors.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Seventeen

2010-04-12T06:19:00.000-05:00

I take the window seat and Sarah and I buckle up. The Boeing 737 takes off from Hartford, hits a air few bumps on the way up and eventually levels off at thirty thousand feet. Perspective is everything, don’t you think? Once the Boeing hits cruising speed, about 500mph, it seems as though it is the earth moving below us rather than the Boeing moving above the earth. It’s called constant velocity motion…no acceleration. Why does a shrink know this? Because this particular shrink has been obsessed recently by the speed of light and relative motion and time. It is only when accelerating that I can feel movement. Once the acceleration stops I feel as though I have stopped. This has to do with the speed of light and the relative motion of the observer. I’ll bet you didn’t know that gravity affects time, and that time cannot be separated from space. I didn’t either until my dream era began. I would actually live longer if my apartment was on the bottom floor of the Eldorado, but I’m not going to give up the view for a life that is only a millisecond longer. Here’s an extreme example of gravity’s affect on time. If I am standing on the event horizon of a black hole where gravity is so strong that light cannot escape its grasp I will see all of history pass before me in the blink of my presbyopic eyes. You on the other hand, standing on earth will see me frozen for all time at that one place on the event horizon.

Being on the Boeing makes me think of all that. Time is tricky business, as I am discovering. The 737 makes a quick stop in Charlotte and a couple hours later touches down on the tarmac of St. Martin. We had booked a room at the Cupe Coy Hotel right on the beach and near the golf course. I don’t golf, but I think the courses are beautiful and easy to run on as long as I don’t get hit by an errant fossilized egg. I’ve had a few golf carts chase me down in my day. I don’t challenge them any more. I see them coming and head into the deep rough and off the course.

Our room looks out over the beach. It’s not crowded like Misquamicut is crowded. If you get to Misquamicut after 11am you’re lucky to find enough sand to walk on. Not my idea of a good time. Coney Island and Jones Beach is the same way. Maybe I don’t like people. Sarah is still in good enough shape to wear a two piece suit. I on the other hand wear a one piece. Sarah points out that I’m in better shape than Kingsley when he played Ghandi. Sweet of her to notice since he looked like a skeleton. I think she says that only because I have on a normal bathing suit and have deep sixed the meat hanger Speedo. I picked up a few choice phrases of Sarah’s. Funny how that happens to all of us. There is plenty of hot sand to cast our blanket upon, and when I say hot I‘m talking oven cleaning hot. We lather up with SPF #30 and begin to bake. I quickly put up the beach umbrella and start writing. That spigot that opens up when I run opens even further at the beach. Maybe it’s because I love being at the beach more than any other place.

“What are you writing?” Sarah asked.

I show her the paragraph you just read.

“Well, you do look better than Kingsley in Gandhi and I’d rather see you au natural like that young gentleman over there than clad in the ridiculous Speedo.”

I look to my left and there sits Adonis and Aphrodite in all their splendor. “Why are we Americans such prudes?” I asked.

“Speak for yourself, Augusto.”

To my amazement, and, I must say pleasure, Sarah proceeds to peel off her only two items of clothing. She looks at me with a challenging gaze and an impish smile. Naturally I oblige and join Sarah in her nudity. I am putty in the hands of gazes and smiles.

“Now,” she said, “as for your question, you already know your take on it. I assume you want to know mine. Why?”

“To build up my knowledge base so that I might better help the prudes of the world who wish to break out of their bonds as we just have.”

Sarah hammer-fists my quadriceps. “No, really,” she said. “What does it matter what I think about American prudishness. Honestly, Augusto, I don’t think about it. I have never had a confrontation with a prude. I don’t judge them and so they don’t appear in my life. Are you writing this down?”

“Yes, Dear.”

“Do you know the difference between primary and secondary experience?” Sarah asked.

I ask her to tell me.

“Primary experience would be if I was sun bathing in the privacy of my yard and a prude came by and gave me an earful of her opinion about my proclivity to lie in the sun in nothing but my birthday suit.”

“Or,” I said, “I’m standing in the grocery line and an old man or woman is counting out pennies.”

“Right. Secondary experience would be my watching news footage of a group of prudes picketing Moon beach in Rhode Island. Actually, I don’t think it’s a nudist beach anymore. Maybe they did picket.”

“What about war,” I said. “War seems a primary experience as it affects so much.”

“The primary experience is when you are personally in the war as you were in Vietnam. It is secondary for you now.”

“What’s so important about primary and secondary experience?” I asked. “Both drive me nuts as it pertains to war. I hate war.” I look to my left and Adonis is making-out with Aphrodite. He is having a primary experience. Mine is secondary if my understanding is correct. Sarah follows my gaze and gives me a wink.

“What is important, Augusto, is that often I will catch myself in an emotional reaction to a secondary experience, like watching that couple over there. My reaction can be anything because it is dependent upon me and my beliefs. I might feel uncomfortable watching if I was with a man who I was not ready to be intimate with, or I might be stimulated as I am now. Those, however, are both secondary experiences. It covers the full gamut, but it is not about that couple, because it is a secondary experience. It is about me and what I believe is appropriate or inappropriate behavior at the beach. It’s a secondary experience because it is not me that is engaged in it.”

“It looks to me,” I said, “that most people react to secondary experience. I know I do.”

“Secondary experience often puts in your face what it is you believe. My girlfriend Alice goes off the deep end over fat families on food stamps that buy nothing but junk food. She bumps into them all the time at the Big Y. She is slim and eats nothing but organically grown foods that she can easily afford. That is her choice, but she goes into big time judgment over what someone else does that has no immediate impact on her experience other than her reaction to it. If everyone chooses then so do obese families that eat junk food. As I’ve told you many times, they don’t need saving. They don’t need fixing.”

I think about that for a moment, and try to conjure a scenario that will trip up Sarah and her primary, secondary theory. “OK,” I said. “What if you are at the Big Y and you see a mother physically abusing her child. That’s secondary experience and it is her choice. It is also the child’s choice. Do you ignore it?”

“I would not ignore it,” Sarah said without any hesitation.

“Aha,” I said. “Gotcha.?

“How so?”

“If it is the mother and the child’s choice what gives you the right to intervene?”

“For a man that played Gandhi you have a short memory. You are taking the position that has enslaved the east for millennia. Karma. It is their karma. What about my desire? I have in internal guideline about this. I will intervene on behalf of myself. I understand they are in their own little dance for their own edification. I do not intervene to judge, but to give them a stop point and to honor my own guidelines. Remember, Augusto, I am a part of their reality just as they are a part of mine. I will not go against who I am. My intervention is for me and in that way I can withhold judgment of the mother’s behavior. Read my lips. I-Intervene-For-Me.”

Sarah has great lips. I set aside my note book and kiss the lips I just read. It feels more than natural. It feels…sublime. I have no expectations of Sarah other than she be Sarah. I’ve not experienced that in myself before. I languish in the sight of her, the smell of her and the taste of her. A scream breaks through my bliss. It is Adonis. We look toward the sound and see Adonis at the water’s edge in all his glory. He is frantic and Aphrodite is nowhere to be seen. He points toward the water and screams out in French. It is clear at that point that Aphrodite is beneath the sea in the area where he is pointing. Sarah and I rush to him, and in broken English he tells us that Aphrodite went for a swim and disappeared. He cannot swim. At that moment Aphrodite breaks the surface of the sea and gasps for air.

Sarah and I rush into the water and swim to the area we last saw Aphrodite sink back into the sea. We dive under and Sarah sees her at the bottom. I see her next and join Sarah in the rescue. Aphrodite is limp and not breathing but we manage to get her to the surface and haul her limp body back to shore, a mere thirty yards away. Less than a minute of CPR produces a geyser of salt water and a deep sucking of air. She is alive and crying. They thank us profusely in broken English then Aphrodite storms back to her blanket. Adonis follows, his tail tucked between his legs.

The save feels good. It all seemed so automatic. It all seemed so dramatic. Aphrodite created a crossroad during her experience. In a world with no accidents it could be no other way. Would she understand what she had just created, or would she understand it as I would have only a few short years ago? Shit happens! That’s what I would have thought. I better swim with a life vest from now on. That old thinking won’t give her any insights. In a world of accidents, coincidences, luck and victim hood I never learned much from the things I felt just happened to me.

We hear Aphrodite screaming at Adonis. We can make out a few French words. She is accusing him of abandoning her and he is apologizing. I can see her point. He never made an attempt to save her, and the water was not that deep. But, fear is fear. Aphrodite grabs her suit, puts on her sandals and storms off. I sense their relationship is over. Sarah agrees.

“She needed an excuse to break up with him,” Sarah said. “She is a woman who hates to hurt people she cares about and couldn’t just come out and tell Adonis that they were through. She needed what to her would be a legitimate excuse and she created one.”

“She will never believe she created that for this purpose,” I said. “Someday we will no longer have to nearly kill ourselves to do what a mere few words would do. She felt so responsible for his feelings that she needed to create an ‘out’ to break up with him. Now he is the one that feels responsible for the breakup. How does a man reclaim the woman he loves after he refuses to even try to save her? Hell, he didn’t even do the CPR.”

Sarah laughed. “It sounds to me like you are leaving him out of the equation. What did he create? He also created a break-up. Looks to me like they both created the experience for the same reason. Even if neither one of them consciously desired to end the relationship they are now finished with each other. It is so difficult getting our minds away from the belief that thought creates and chooses. Aphrodite didn’t fake her drowning and Adonis didn’t fake his fear of the water.”

“You were magnificent out there,” I said. Sarah knows I mean it, knows that I am referring to much more than her magnificence in the face of crisis. Every breath Sarah takes is an act of magnificence to me.

Sarah leans over and kisses me. It is much more than a thank you kiss. We gather our things and quick-step back to our room. If you haven’t been to St. Martin I recommend it. Not so much for sight seeing as for romance. But then I suppose much of it has to do with the one you’re with. If he or she is a troll then romance isn’t going to happen. Sex might, but not romance. So I amend my recommendation for St. Martin. It is a great place for romance if you are with the right person. Sarah could not have been more right. Adonis and Aphrodite could not have been more wrong.

On our last day on the island we book passage on a large catamaran called the Big Cat and set sail for St. Barth’s with four other couples. St. Barth’s is a small island about two hours sail from St. Martin. It is on the Big Cat that we meet a most unusual couple. Tanya and Ralph Okando met two years ago at the Boston Marathon. I must have seen each of them. I stopped competing in the BAA marathon in 1985, but haven’t missed one as a spectator since then. I usually park myself with my buddies at the twenty-five mile mark on Commonwealth. It’s near Fenway.

The Okandos have twelve months of marriage under their belts and ten years of paraplegia. Tanya was thrown from a horse a la Christopher Reeves, while Ralph got his from an eighty year old woman that failed to yield at an intersection Ralph was biking through. Sarah and I do not engage them at first. It’s terrible to say, but we don’t want to get too close and then feel obligated to help them all day. It is what it is. I feel no guilt over it…well, maybe a little. I notice Sarah going into quiet mode, that physical place she goes to when connecting with energy.

“They have the most open energy I’ve ever seen,” Sarah said.

I am curious. “What does that look like?” I ask.

“It reaches out, invites,” She said.

“Invites what?”

“Interaction, connection. I see no defense. Their energy acts as if they are whole…and they are, of course, but at the level of their energy. Their energy does not reflect their paraplegia.”

The Okandos sit ten feet away. The wind and the water mask Sarah’s voice.

“I had a paraplegic as a client several years ago,” Sarah said. “From her waist down her energy ventured no further than three inches away. It was as if she believed she was half a woman and her energy reflected it.”

Tanya and Ralph have upper bodies to die for in a culture that is hell bent for comparison city. It is clear that they love being physical in their bodies, legs that work or not. Sarah’s words put in to focus what I am feeling. I am drawn to them despite my beliefs about being responsible and not wanting to engage that belief in this moment. Their energy trumps my fear. Sarah and I introduce ourselves, the only couple to do so, and move next to them. From that point on the day picked up speed.

Half way to St. Barth’s the Big Cat lowered its sails and the skipper invited us to dive into the vast Caribbean. The Okandos are the first off the boat. Sarah and I dive into their wake. I tell them I saw them at the Marathon two years ago.

“Small world,” they say together.

“Actually, it’s pretty big,” I say, sure that they don’t understand my meaning, even though I understand theirs. “How did you get over it…the legs, I mean. You seem almost not to care.”

Tanya laughed. “It was a dream,” she said. “Want to hear it? Most don’t.”

“I’m all ears,” I said.

“Before the accident all I cared about was being the best cross country rider in the world, male or female. At eighteen I made the US Olympic equestrian trials. I love horses and riding, but I love winning more. My goal replaced everything I valued. I judged every moment of my life in terms of reaching my goal of being the best. I was wicked to be around. My nickname was ‘horse bitch.’ I was proud of it. Then came the fall.”

Tanya dives under the water to cool off her head.

“For a year afterward you wouldn’t want to be around me. I wallowed in self-pity, and nobody could do right by me. Then came the dream. It was a simple dream, but big. I saw my legs in a casket and my self standing next to it, whole. There is a plaque on the casket. It reads, ‘there is no greater sacrifice than to give one’s life for another.’ I understood it immediately. Me, Tanya Reading – that’s my maiden name – could not be whole with my legs. I mean I could have had I listened sooner, but my beliefs about who I was were too strong to overcome without drastic measures.”

“Who were you?” Sarah asked.

“I was what I did or didn’t do. I was nothing outside of what I accomplished or didn’t accomplish. That sucks in a world that sees only what I do. Don’t do and I don’t exist. Losing my legs was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”

“But you’re still exceptionally competitive,” I pointed out.

“Sure,” Tanya said. “I love to compete. I love challenges. I love to push myself. The difference now is I don’t beat myself up when I lose. Now it’s about the process. I came in third in that marathon you watched. Had I come in third when I had my legs I would have freaked. I was good then at beating myself into a bloody pulp. I am content with what is, now.”

Neither Sarah nor I respond. We tread water to keep from drowning. I wonder if it’s a metaphor…our treading water. Khidr spoke in Tanya, and unlike Moses, she got it. It wasn’t fate that took her legs and turned them to straw. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t bad luck. Tanya turned it from those things into a gift. Ralph’s story was similar, but without the remembered dream. He had the dream, this I know. Ralph just didn’t bring it to conscious awareness. It worked in the background for him. I think way back to when I believed that dreams were nothing more than the brain sloughing off the detritus of the day. What tripe!

There is something magical about sailing on a catamaran on a turquoise sea. The sail back from St. Barth’s is quiet. The experience is more a dream than a reality, a metaphor itself for something other than it is, pointing us toward a place deeper than the one we know.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Eighteen

2010-04-12T06:17:00.001-05:00

Time moves faster as you age. If you’re young you should trust me on this. What seems only a year ago invariably turns out to be three. It seems impossible that Sarah and I are married a year already. I look at the time and realize how slowly time moves when I watch our measurement of it, and how quickly it passes when I am having fun. This is more than interesting. The realization is telling me something. What is boring slows time and what is fun…well, you know. I decide that fun is the natural human state. Boredom, drudgery and stress are not. Until my dream era there was more boredom and drudgery than fun. Dolly Parton’s movie ‘9 to 5’ sums it up pretty well, unless you love your work, of course. I love my work, but not all the time. I love being with Sarah, but not all the time. She agrees with me.

For two weeks Sarah lives with me in New York. The third week she’s back in Norwich. We’re flexible in this, but it is a year round thing. Our respective businesses of the mind make it so. There is much to be said for alone time. I have always needed it and so has Sarah. Even a soul mate will eventually get under your skin. Those of you that have one know what I’m talking about. Living with Sarah has expanded my understanding of energy as it relates to what energy makes. Everything my senses register on my mind is the product of energy. Any physicist worth his salt will confirm this. Ask Alex. I am beginning to see energy, little projections of color moving and swirling around everything I see. I can’t do it all the time, but when I do it is an affirmation of what I know. It never crossed my mind to see an ophthalmologist.

Sarah doesn’t think about these things as I do. She takes in the world differently. It is as if we are wired by differently trained electricians. I’m not saying that one is right and one is wrong. I’m simply saying we process the world differently. She is Miss Emotion, and Ben here, is Mr. Potato Head, my slang for over thinking. Our differences got me to thinking about the Myers-Briggs personality classification system. I won’t bore you with it because that is exactly what it will do…bore you. But, here’s the deal. What if there are different ways we humans process our reality. What if there are, say, three different ways we do it. My sister Rose is an introvert. My old girlfriend Debra is an extrovert and I am a bit of both. It’s not as simple as that. I’m sure of it.

In my practice I have tried to squeeze everyone under the hood of the Bell curve. What if the Bell Curve represents just one of the three human perceptual sets, the majority one? I’m working this out as I go, so give me some slack here. I would say that I fit into the majority and therefore the most common perceptual prism. I get my information from the world of matter and things. They speak to me. Rose, and for that matter Sarah as well, are more than just emotional. When I ask Sarah why she does certain things she invariably says, “I don’t know. I just felt like it.” She pretty much does what she wants. We all do that, but not with the frequency that Sarah and Rose do it. The outside world doesn’t seem as important to them as their own inner directive. It is difficult to describe from my perspective. It makes for some conflict, though, as I am a guy that needs explanations. Our culture needs explanations. We can’t understand action without an explanation for it. If you ask little Johnny why he hits his sister and he says, “I don’t know,” it drives most parents over the edge, except those parent who are put together like Rose and Sarah…or Johnny. All their lives they have experienced that action of doing without a cause or a rational reason. They don’t always understand the question ‘why’ because there wasn’t an objective reason driving their action.

What might the third perceptual prism be? How about a combination of the other two? I have a patient like that. He’s hard to figure because in one moment he sees things like me and another moment like Sarah. From what Sarah told me about Tom, her dog sitter, he seems a lot like my patient Dean LaRusso. I love Dean. Our sixty minute sessions seem like ten. Dean is gay like Tom, but Dean is flamboyant where Tom is not. If Sarah didn’t tell me Tom is gay I would have never known. Unless, of course…never mind. Dean on the other hand never misses a gay pride parade. His favorite costume is a cop’s uniform. He loves cops and paratroopers. I haven’t figured out the paratrooper thing and neither has Dean. But this goes to the point. Dean doesn’t know why he likes paratroopers.

Keep in mind that my thinking on this is in the rudimentary stage…like a stone wheel that eventually morphs through time into a moon rover wheel. I’m at the car wheel stage. We all look like humans, but as a species we have three perceptual sets. Mine, the most common, sets the rules of our civilization. That’s not so good for Dean and Tom, and really bad for Sarah and Rose. Dean and Tom can swing both ways (no pun intended), but it is easier if they swing my way because they will fit in better. Sarah and Rose cannot do that. Sarah could have grown up confused about her identity, but she didn’t. Her parents are dead, but I’ll bet they had the same perceptual orientation as their daughter or she might not have turned out so well. It was still a struggle though, since she was embedded in a world of Augustos. There is nothing worse for a pear than to be brought up by two oranges. That was Rose’s downfall. My parents were just like me. Rose was always different.

If this is true, and I think it is, it can help me in my practice. I’ve spent my professional life trying to squeeze apples and pears into oranges. That comparing thing is a big deal for the apples and pears. The oranges do it too, but when oranges rule the world it doesn’t pay to be anything else. That’s not to say that apples and pears can’t be happy. They can even be happy with oranges. Sarah and I prove the point. But, I’ll bet pears get along best with pears, apples with apples and oranges with oranges. It’s no wonder I’ve had such a difficult time understanding where people are coming from. Well, not all people, just the apples and pears. Apples and pears can try to look like oranges and they often do. They want to fit in. But bite into one and their secret is revealed. Being an orange I can never fully appreciate the perception of apples and pears. My rational mind cannot enter their place of residence. I’d like to, though. It makes for less conflict. Maybe I do in some of my many lives or focuses of attention as I now call them.

As you can see, I am making progress on The Frog Handled Mug, but I can’t see how it is to end. I didn’t know what this page was to look like until I began writing it, so I’m not too worried about it. I guess it’s called being in the now, a most popular phrase in 2012. Alex is at MIT finishing his Ph.D. dissertation. He should be done by May. He had to do some serious persuading to get a faculty sponsor. Alex has an answer for everything. He is an orange. Having a pear as a mother was perfect for him. What if we chose our parents? There’s nothing better for an orange that wants to think outside the box than to have a mother that lives outside the box. It is a box built by oranges for oranges. Anyway, proposing a dissertation on simultaneous time to a faculty made up primarily of oranges, and pears and apples hiding out as oranges, is worthy of my praise. Alex sends Sarah and me clippings whenever his work is cited. It is being cited more and more. As Alex would say…Geeze!

So I am thinking, getting back to energy, that it is the energy that creates the body and not visa-versa. The energy is conscious, which means…at least to me…that the universe is conscious. I wonder if Alex has thought of that. It ties into my one-time experience of being everything and myself at the same time. This everything-is-connected thing may be more literal than just some feel good new age drivel. If everything is literally connected it would explain Alain Aspect’s discovery of instant communication at a distance between quantum particles. The eggheads call it non-local action or something like that. The communication is instant because the particles are not separate. They only appear to be, just as we appear to be.

I loved Ayn Rand. I still do. Her skill at spinning a yarn is timeless. Ayn was a staunch anti-communist, and her book, Atlas Shrugged, held high both the individual and capitalism. This is all related. Trust me. By now you have to be getting used to how my mind works. It tends to flit about. Capitalism is failing, but for the opposite reason communism failed. When I am you and not you at the same time, but don’t know it, it is easy for me to fool myself into thinking that what I do affects no one but me. Or, if nothing else, I affect only those in a relatively close perimeter. Communism failed, among other things, because the individuals never believed in the communal nature of life. Put simply it was, why bust my ass for the same pay as Ivan when Ivan drinks vodka and smokes cigarettes all day. It was an issue of fairness and not an issue of Ivan and I being connected at the deepest level. If you ask me this shift thing is bringing into experience the concept of connectedness. Everything affects everything and until we get that, Capitalism is going to spiral down the shoot.

Dreams are simple and complex at the same time, like life. Shortly before marrying Sarah I had a simple dream. I saw a large carpet. It was symbolic of the universe because all the galaxies were woven into its design. James sat upon the carpet, legs crossed Indian style, his arms rested in his lap. I am awake during this dream, and I continue to thank my frog handled mug for it. As I look closer James is not actually sitting on the carpet but rather is woven into it. He is impaired. Where, I don’t know, but I suspect it is an injury of spirit. The threads of his body are broken. I see the other threads rush to repair the breaks in the pattern that is James. He brushes them away and they honor his intent.

The dream used James, but it was about me, about us, you and me and all the other six billion of us that make up the fabric of the carpet. I saw James refuse help from the whole that the carpet represents. Why? What is it I do that so keeps me from the support that seems so readily available in the dream. James brushes the help away as if saying, “I don’t need your help. I can do this myself.” My thoughts return to Ayn Rand and her hero, the individual. I can feel it coming, the connection. It seems big to me if I can only connect a word to the energy I feel. My mind darts to Rand’s America and the Declaration of Independence.

I get it. I get the word, and it is no more likely that I received the word ‘independence’ from some fired up chemically based neuron, than it is I received my Christmas presents from Santa Claus. I reflect on why independence, the pearl of the American way of life, keeps the whole at bay. I think of Sarah’s words, ‘open to receiving.’ I think of my mother. She was one of those feisty Italian women that detested help as much as she detested the devil. Before her death in 2009 she could barely see, and walked with such a limp she needed a cane so as not to fall over. People loved her, especially those in her church. She loved them, too. When she was able she readily and enthusiastically gave aid and comfort to those that needed help. When she needed that same aid and comfort her friends had to beg to give it.

The carpet comes back to mind. The weave obeys, but does not hold grudges as we do. We give up once our offer of help is denied. Not so the carpet. Deny it a million times and it will give on the next request. It never gives up just as my mother’s church friends never gave up. How does a people whose culture is based on the individual and independence let go of their pearl. Indeed, should we let go. Up/down, black/white, good/bad, independence/dependence. That is where my mind first travels. If I give up independence I become dependent. I don’t think this is about that. It seems the logical conclusion, though. If I am not independent then I am dependent, the perfectly drawn conclusion in a world of duality.

No. I can be dependent and still be disconnected from the whole. If dependence equates to connectedness then surely the poor would have already inherited the earth. My mother was dependent and she still couldn’t see or walk without a cane, and she seemed nor more enlightened than before. The rock solid duality of our reality makes this difficult for me to see. I want to go to that place where connectedness heals. Somehow my independence keeps me from it. Ah! It comes to me. Independence separates.

The phone rings. It’s Sarah. She promised to call when she arrived in Norwich. Sarah is good about doing what she says she will do. I’m less responsible that way. When she arrives, she calls. I might call a few hours after I arrive if I remember at all. “Hi, Honey,” I said. “Get home alright?”

“Yep, You sound…diffuse. Like I only have part of you on the phone.”
“I am,” I said. “My mind is stumbling over a concept. What is it about independence that keeps the individual from connection?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “Instead of diving into the word why not dive into the life of someone you think is independent. It’s sort of a relative term…independence. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I arrived home safely. Good luck in your quest, Augusto, but don’t obsess so much. I love you. Bye.”

I say goodbye and close the cell. I have a headache. That tells me I’m pushing, trying to force something that isn’t ready to be forced. Until now I’ve been good about doing that…not forcing. You can probably tell by way of this chapter that I’ve been forcing. Trying to squeeze water out of a dry towel will not produce water no matter how hard I squeeze. It’s six o’clock and I turn on the news. Wolf Blitzer is starting to look old. Five are dead from an IED in Afghanistan. Unemployment is at twelve percent and the standard of living is dropping. No surprises there. They’re building that wind energy farm off of Martha’s Vineyard. Finally! When an individual can afford energy no matter what the price he can also afford to bitch about his scenic view the wind mills will obscure. Hey, we’re all connected here.

I catch myself on that last one. I am as connected to the rich folk of Martha’s Vineyard as I am to the poor folk of Bangladesh. The rich are no more to blame for our energy mess than anyone else. It is a mass creation, whether it is in conscious awareness or not. It’s tough not falling back into the old blame and shame game.

I was a Kennedy liberal before all this started. I was overjoyed at Obama’s election. For me it was more symbolic than anything else. The Democrats were responsible for protecting the oppressed, the Republicans for keeping the rich wealthy. They strongly believed in the Regan trickle down effect. That’s the way it looked to me anyway. Not any more, at least in terms of judging the Democrats as good and the Republicans as bad. Each is as much a part of the carpet as my lungs are a part of me. I have concluded that the most desperate Bangladeshi is as responsible for the predicament we find ourselves in as any powerful political party. If I am no longer a victim, then neither is anyone else, despite appearances to the contrary. We believe we are what our thinking tells us. The Okandos are an increasing exception to the rule that shit happens. Khidr is steadily rising into conscious awareness.

I look at my frog handled mug sitting on the kitchen counter. I see it in most of my dreams no matter what time period the dream occurs in. It is the perfect dream trigger. We’ve been making pottery as long as we have been making wheels. I am thinking of the economy as I look at the mug, and it strikes me that from 2075 and beyond I never see money exchanged. I can’t imagine a world without money, or how that world might work. It started with the David Cawley focus walking out of the store without paying for his mug. The lack of currency exchange is so foreign to me it doesn’t register until now. Maybe my thinking about independence triggered the recognition.

After all, I thought, most of us equate money to independence. I don’t need the money, but even I have thought about how wonderful it would be to win the lottery. This lottery thing is almost a syndrome. The trouble is that the data doesn’t support the notion. Within a few years the winners are often penniless and more miserable than ever. What is it that comes with wealth? Responsibility. With money I am responsible for so much more than without it. I have the wherewithal to help my friends, my family and all who know me, but with that go a lot of baggage. I like the helping thing, but not the baggage. It’s like the CEO of a large corporation. He appears independent, able to get every manmade thing he wants. He is also enmeshed in responsibility at all levels. From the CFO down to the janitorial staff the CEO, by way of his decisions, is responsible for it all. Unless he is a sociopath it has to affect him. That is a heavy load to carry. The buck stops here. Didn’t Harry Truman say that? It is a weight as dense as a black hole. What does the energy of responsibility do? What does it look like? In conjunction with independence it separates the individual and repels the natural help of the carpet. I need to sleep on this because on the surface independence and responsibility are highly valued. We teach it to our kids from the moment they arrive. I’m missing something. I am making this shift thing, as big as it is, more complex than it is intended to be. I need a break from my thinking.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Nineteen

2010-04-12T06:15:00.000-05:00

Alex Hastings sits at this desk, his Nobel hangs on the wall behind him. A knock on the door takes his attention away from the papers on his desk. David Cawley walks in. The scene is familiar, a dé jà vu kind of thing. David tells Alex how honored he is to meet him, but is curious why the esteemed physics professor beckoned a new history professor to his office. Everything in the dream is the same as before, except for the following conversation.

“Oh,” Alex said. “One more thing. Augusto also wanted me to tell you that the book he is writing is not Addiction as Choice, but is The Frog Handled Mug.

I don’t know why Alex smiles when he relays my message, but he does. If my dream is a glimpse of the future then the future has changed, at least as far as this one conversation is concerned.

“I just finished reading his copy of the manuscript,” David said. “Your mother gave it to my father before she died and he gave it to me a few weeks ago. I know that you read it and that it provided you the insight to completing your work.”

“Augusto didn’t know that would be one of the effects of his work on the book. He was writing it to better understand himself and what was happening to him. Within the book it is this conversation we are having now, written some fifty years ago, that triggered the insight. It hadn’t occurred to me before how plastic time is; that the present has the ability to change not only the future – that made sense to me – but that it can change the past as well. I read what Augusto had done on the book when I was twenty-five. His insights about the shift were close, but not quite on target. The shift was just making its way into conscious awareness.”

“He’s listening now,” David said.

“I know, and I think he is about to change his future again.”

I wake up even more confused. Why does David have a copy of the manuscript and not the book itself? And, the conversation was different in another way. I am changing the future for myself as David Cawley and David Cawley is changing the course of my present. We are mutually affecting. He is changing the past. It hadn’t occurred to me that in writing The Frog Handled Mug that Alex would learn of his Nobel prize…if he believed what I was saying in the book. I nudge Sarah awake.

“What?” she said. “It’s 3am.”

“Should I leave the part about Alex winning the Nobel out of the book?”

“No. Why would you want to?”

“Can he handle the bullshit he might get? He’ll barely have his Ph.D. by the time the book comes out…if it comes out. I’m his step father. Maybe it will look like a campaign to get him the prize. I don’t know. This is all so strange.”

“What do you want to do?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t believe this hadn’t occurred to me before. I can’t decide.”

The implication of what I just said hit me. I know that when I finally decide what to do about Alex and his prize that I am going to create another timeline and therefore another Augusto DeRosa. Will leaving mention of Alex winning the Nobel out of the book result in his winning or not winning? He didn’t say anything in the dream about his Nobel Prize. All he said was that the influence was reading the conversations. He had the prize. It was hanging on his wall, but did he win it with me mentioning it in the book or not mentioning it in the book? I run it by Sarah, who is not fully awake.

“You don’t create Alex’s reality, Augusto. You can only create your own. What you are presenting to yourself in all of this is your reality, not Alex’s. Only Alex can create his, or else there is no free choice. Without free choice we are all victims again of someone else’s choice.”

“So what I am seeing in my dreams could be very different for Alex?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. That is up to Alex. You can only influence him if he allows the influence. You are not responsible for the course of his life, even though you have each drawn each other into your respective experiences. He may blame you or say you are responsible, but what he does and what he experiences is always his choice, even when it looks like someone else is doing something to him. Why don’t you ask him what he would want? My guess is he will tell you that it is your choice. I know my son.”

“So it is possible that Alex’s future is completely different than the one I am seeing?”

“It’s possible,” Sarah said, “but not probable. Everything exists as a probability for each of us, but some things are more probable than others. That’s what quantum physics is about. I can’t have Alex as my son and not know this. He’s been feeding me this wacko-world stuff since he first learned about it at seven. That’s why we have all of this connecting technology. If it was all just a guess we wouldn’t have the internet. You can’t have a certainty of one, but some things get pretty darn close. Now, go to sleep. We can talk about this in the morning if you want.”

I let Sarah sleep, but I don’t. This makes my reality even more complex than the immense complexity I have exposed myself to. This is like learning trigonometry, but I suspect it is me making it difficult. The shift should be like simple addition. I remember an instance where Sarah and I saw a movie together. Several months later I bring it up – I don’t remember why – and she says she never saw it. My initial reaction and the one most of us would have was that she forgot it, but how. She has a memory almost as good as Alex’s. She even raved about the movie when she saw it. Who was I with if not Sarah? I try to put together the pieces of what I know. Our energy is enormous, spanning all space and time. I project my energy to Sarah and she creates her physical manifestation of me. I do the same with her energy. Could it be that I was only interacting with her energy, but not her attention? Was her attention elsewhere? I know that attention is not thought, but that attention too often gets stuck on thought. What is thought if it’s not attention? What directs attention if not thought? Me. My attention is me.

If attention is me then what is thought? What the hell is thought or thinking if it isn’t consciousness itself? When I wake up I am going back to the web and dig deeper into this shift stuff. Someone must have some ideas on it because I sure don’t. It’s confusing me. I quit my thinking, whatever it is, and fall back to sleep.

I wake up before Sarah and fire up the computer. I find a few forums where people discuss the shift. One in particular interests me. I become a lurker. No one knows I am listening…reading. It’s the internet version of a peeping Tom. I don’t care. The amount of information is daunting, thousands of pages. Some bullshit, but a lot of good stuff, too. They are working their way through their own understanding, and making progress. The gloves are off here. No moderator. It will take me weeks to get through it all, but I am determined to do so. I have to. The people are from all over the world, but mainly from the US and Europe. There are many Germans. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not, but I like what they are saying. I have a good feeling about this.

I call Alex.

“Is it already written in your manuscript?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Then leave it.”

“Are you sure you’re OK with that?” I don’t trust his decision. He’s still too young in my mind to make such decisions. There’s a big belief.

“Augusto. All probabilities are played out. Consciousness is big enough to hold it all. Can I read what you have?”

I think of my dream. “No,” I reply. “You have to wait. Reading it now will change the probabilities.”

Alex laughs. “OK Augusto. You have my blessings. Whatever happens to me is my choice, not yours. But I want to say that I can feel your influence in some of the choices I make.”

My insecurity voices itself. “Positive or negative?”

Alex laughs again. “That’s in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it? Let me put it this way. Thank you. Say hi to mom for me. I have to go.”

I take Alex’s advice and decide to leave the book as it is written. Like Sarah said, I can’t create his reality. That’s a thought that is catching on. I hear it more and more in casual conversation. Whether they believe it or not is another matter. If Billy the Kid shoots me in the foot it certainly seems like he created the hole. Much still to be worked out here.

Most conversations these days are not about the nature of reality, but about the election. It’s nothing like 2008. People aren’t interested. When people do get around to talking about it they talk about getting government out of their business. My pet peeve is insurance. I can’t drive a car without it. I mean I can, but if I get pulled over I am in violation of a law. I can’t own a home without it, but that is the bank protecting its investment. Then there is the health thing. I’m never sick. I never had an accident in any car I’ve driven, and my home is one of many inside the Eldorado. I’ve shelled out thousands of dollars for something I have never used.

Insurance is a trust thing, or rather a lack of trust thing. It is born out of a strong belief that we create some things but not all things; like being shot in the foot by Billy the Kid. Obama and the Dems have slapped regulations on the insurance industry, but not on their power to raise premiums to recoup the losses they incur because of the regulations. People are pissed. I am pissed. The difference is that I see it all as a symbol. I’m pissed because I cannot decipher the symbol. Fear is created by not knowing what the future might bring. That sounds like worry to me. Rose is a worrier. It takes her out of the present as quickly as being shot out of a cannon. Despite her epiphany she continues to worry about James. He dropped out of UConn and can’t keep the most menial of jobs. He doesn’t get the connection between his drug use and multiple job losses. It’s difficult for me not to feel for the kid. I don’t want to stop feeling for him. I want to stop thinking that he is making the wrong choices. The two are different, really. This shift thing is not about lobotomizing the human race, nor is it about creating the Garden of Eden.

Emotions are part of the human condition, the good, the bad and the ugly. They are ever present, so present they seem part of the rules that govern this reality. We Will Feel. It should have been on the tablets Moses brought down from the mountain. I don’t think this rule is going to change with the shift. Sure, we’ll be running to third after hitting the ball, and it will be women playing the game, but the players will still be happy when they hit a homer, and sad when they hit into a double play. So, what is it about emotions? They seem like they are reactions. I am happy when Sarah plants a good morning kiss on my cheek, and I am sad when she is sad. I am not happy first and then the kiss, and I am not sad before I notice that Sarah is sad. At least it seems that way. This is clearly not a what-comes-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg thing.

Alex, with his simultaneous time concept, might argue that the chicken and the egg arise mutually. He would say the emotion and the apparent cause of it arise simultaneously. If so, then emotion must carry more information than simply the feeling of it. The feeling is clear. I am sad. I am angry. I am worried. There is more to it. There has to be. It is too pervasive to be so simple.

I hear a knock at my door. I don’t feel like seeing anyone and I am not expecting company. I ignore it. Maybe they’ll go away. No such luck. Whoever it is knocks harder. Do they know I am home? The TV is off. It’s quiet in here. This time they pound on the door and I get up and answer it. It’s two guys from public utilities. Someone reported a gas leak and they need to inspect my stove. I let them in and they do their business. The leak isn’t from my apartment. I go back to my thoughts and my writing of them.

I reflect on what just happened and my decision to not answer the knock on the door. I feel it is related to what I was thinking about emotion and what emotion might be. What if emotion – sad, mad, glad, etc. – is not really the emotion? What if those feelings I get that I call emotion are signals, and the real emotion is something else? I continue to work my way through what just happened. I had three feelings, each based on the strength of the knock. My feelings progressed from annoyance to frustration to anger by the time I finally got up to answer the door. Had I answered the door at the first knock frustration and anger would not have reared their ugly heads. Annoyance I can deal with. It’s fleeting. Frustration and anger I don’t like. By ignoring the knock my feelings intensified. I created that experience in alliance with the utility guys. So, the feeling of annoyance is a signal, but a signal of what? A communication maybe? Could my feelings be an alerting device that I am receiving some kind of communication? I no longer believe I receive anything from anyone or anything outside of myself, and that my self is connected with everything. I must be sending myself some kind of message. I don’t think it has to be a big message, since I have emotions all the time. Many of them are so subtle I don’t notice. When I pay attention to me I do.

The objective reality is that the knock on the door is a signal that there is someone behind the door, just as the ringing cell is a signal that someone has something to say to me. Could it possibly be as simple as pointing out that in the moment I get the feeling, say of frustration, that what I am telling myself is that I am experiencing an inability to create the peace I was feeling before the knock? Does the emotion tell me what I am really doing on a deeper more subjective level? Maybe. The feeling is about the exact moment that I create it. What do you believe, Augusto? What are you doing? Think! I believed that the knock at the door was an intrusion and not created by me. I know. I know. You’re sitting there in your easy chair reading this book and saying I didn’t create those utility guys or the knock on the door. Trust me when I say it is perfectly reasonable for you to say that. I’m not trying to convince you. Those days are over for me. I’m just telling a story. My story.

I decide to put into practice my thinking on this matter of emotion. As much as I can – because breaking old habits isn’t easy – I am going to pay attention to my signals, not as reactions, but as an alerting device to an incoming communication. It is simple. Answer the phone and find out what the caller has to say. In this case the caller is me and I am only communicating about the moment I experience the signal. I wonder if in ignoring the signal I create more dramatic ways of getting my attention. The utility guy escalated from a polite, yet somewhat urgent knock, to a hard and insistent pound. There are some pretty nasty ways I can get my attention. Stubbing my toe is nothing compared to cancer. I can’t recall the last time I stubbed my toe. I did it often before my dream era. I must be paying attention to what I do. This is an encouraging sign.

There’s another knock at the door. This time I’m there in a heartbeat. It’s the utility guys again. They found the leak in the basement. Nothing major and easily fixed. The gas levels are only trace amounts and there is no need to evacuate the building. I thank them and they leave. I ruminate over what just happened. At the level of Khidr- the subjective level – the utility guys joined me in my dance and I joined them in theirs. It’s the carpet thing. At the level of Moses – the objective level – they have no idea. At this level I was just some guy in a room they had to get into to do their thing. There are turning out to be many levels of communication.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Twenty

2010-04-12T06:13:00.001-05:00

I invited James to join Sarah and me for the weekend in New York. He jumped at the idea. Anything, I guess, to get away from the prison he created for himself in Storrs. James believes the problem lies in where he lives. I told him he is delusional. If a drugging life is what he wants the drugs will find him. He will draw them like a magnet draws iron fillings when pulled through the sand. He should be here any minute. He called twenty minutes ago from Grand Central. I could have met him there, but hey, James is a big boy.

Sarah answers the door and lets him in. He’s straight. Whenever he is straight he dresses more like a preppie than a homey. When he is straight he calls me uncle Augie. When he is high he calls me dude. He calls everyone dude. I hate it. It’s so…fucked up. James works out regularly when he’s straight and it looks like he’s been straight for about a week. No sores on his neck and face. I can tell by that and the tone of his body. The kid’s muscles are infused with steel, or so it seems. When he’s on a drug bender his body shows it. I should start calling him Pee Wee Herman when he’s high. He’d hate it. Interacting with James I bounce back and forth between what I have recently learned and my old programming. It’s difficult to overcome so many years of programming. Maybe I can get to James before his own programming becomes invisible to him.

I don’t see who I was in the past as anything to regret. Who I was has as much to do with who I am now and my explorations of life as coffee beans have to do with the coffee I drink. James gives Sarah and me a hug and thanks us for the invite. His voice is clear and deep, a regular baritone. At some level he is as intellectually gifted as Alex. He leans toward philosophy, but his true love is music. James’ memory equals Alex’s. I tell James anything and it is locked and loaded, as long as he is straight. It’s difficult for me to see that there is choice and purpose in all that James creates. That web forum I visit says if he wasn’t being fulfilled in terms of his life exploration then he would disengage. That’s their word for die. They also say there is value in what we don’t like. There may be value in it, but it doesn’t change my dislike. It does soften the edges of it, though.

“I’m starved,” James said. “Metro North is like a death camp for the perpetually hungry.”

“We’ll be eating in an hour,” Sarah says, “but we have apples, oranges and pears. You can have one to tide you over.”

James chooses a pear and my right brow lifts. If he is a pear it explains a lot. I thought he was an orange. Of course his choice may not be symbolic at all. Maybe he likes pears better than oranges or apples, but I don’t think it’s that. Or at least not just that. I make it a point to pay closer attention. We talk about the reading Sarah will do for James after dinner. He’s excited and hopes she’ll find something that will get him finally unhooked from his addictions. When asked he cannot say what draws him back to drugging. He feels like a yoyo, and it is dragging him down. If he is a pear and constantly tries to be an orange then his drugs may be the only time he feels free…as screwed up as that sounds. Freedom is freedom. It is not dependent upon the person looking in from the outside. All James knows is the feeling he gets when high that he has found impossible to get when not.

Sarah is frugal when cooking, making only enough for what she thinks we will eat. There are no leftovers. There was one wing, and you know how that works. No one wants to be the glutton that takes the last piece of anything. I tell James to take it. He readily obliges. James does the dishes then joins Sarah and me in the living room for a few beers. He never had a Guinness before. Kids! I can tell he isn’t interested in small talk. He takes after me in that regard. I ask if he is ready to start the session with Sarah.

Psychics are nothing like I had envisioned them to be. They are actually normal, whatever that is. Sarah’s routine included no candles, no round table, no dim lights and no crystals. We simply sat where we were and she began. James looks surprised. Sarah quieted herself.

“You hold your energy close to your body, James,” she said.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“It means you are not open to receiving and you are not open to yourself. You are trying to be something you are not and you don’t want anyone to know you are a faking it.”

I keep my attention on James. He begins to play with his hands, a sure body language sign that something has struck a nerve.

“You are more like me than you are like your uncle. Your mind works in overdrive because you are constantly trying to fit into a world that runs in a way unlike you perceive it to run, but you are very good at learning how to fit it.”

“How do you know all this?” James said. “If you only see energy how do you make sense out of it?”

“The same way anyone makes sense of their world, through experience. One of my languages is energy. I’ve seen it all my life and I can interpret subtle differences in it. All energy is one, but there are personality pools and each pool inherently reaches out and mixes with all the other pools. Because of free choice no pool has to accept the energy offered by the other pools, but is free to configure it in any way they choose. That may be why you have struggled so much. You are not open to receiving. You hide behind what you think you should be.”

Tears pool in James’s eyes. Sarah notices and says, “You are releasing energy, James. It is reaching out. Your emotions come as explosions because you bottle them up. I can see it. Energy will not be contained. I see gentleness in the hues of your energy. You struggle against it for you believe it makes you weak. I see it try to expand even now, but you pull it back. You fear exposure and yet exposure is what you want most.”

James is sobbing now. He feels seen for the first time. He feels exposed.

“You are tough of spirit, James, and spirit will win out even if you only accept it at the moment of your death. That choice is yours. I see you, James. I see the essence of who you are even though you can’t. You have a beautiful soft energy that can be so affecting of others when you let it free. You do not need to see the world like your Uncle. It is impossible for you. It is impossible for me. We are different. See the world in the way it speaks to you, inwardly. You can no more pretend to be something you are not than the sun can pretend to be the moon. Energy knows energy. You are fooling no one other than yourself. Hiding is an illusion.”

James wipes his eyes. “Can you see whether I’ll stay clean or not?”

Sarah closes her eyes. “It’s a strong possibility right now, James, but the choice is yours. There is no fate. There is no destiny. Everything is choice.”

“How do I make that choice?” James asked.

“I wish I knew,” Sarah said. “I know your struggles. I have experienced them myself. But, I am fortunate in that I caught myself at my game of camouflage early in life. It is OK to be a Zebra, James, in a world run by horses. You cannot hide your stripes any more than you can hide your humanness. Your zebra-ness will always show through. Be the zebra. The horses will love you for it, but more importantly, you will love you for it.”

Had James come to this session cold turkey he might not have understood, but we had been talking of these things for some time now. I’m glad we have.

“What do you want, James?” I asked.

“I want someone to love me,” he said. It is clear that he has thought about that question for some time.

“Your parents love you. We love you.” I said.

“That’s different,” James said. “You have to. You wouldn’t have anything to do with me if I wasn’t related to you”

“You may be right, James,” Sarah said. “You are going to get exactly what you put out. You have to get good with yourself. Energy talks, bullshit walks. How can you expect to draw someone into your life when the energy you put out is one of self-loathing and self contempt? Quit comparing yourself to a false idea of what you should be. Drop the ‘shoulds.’ There aren’t any except what your thinking tells you.”

“That’s not so easy to do when everyone has expectations of me. You could have been this. You could have been that. You blew it. You had so much potential. Hell, I’m only 22. I hear this shit all the time and it makes me feel worse about myself because I believe it. I know they’re right.”

I tell James the story of Moses and Khidr and of the Okandos. I sense that it is not difficult to go from self loathing to self love. It is not as complex as we make it out to be. It shouldn’t need the lengthy process we shrinks think it needs. I am thinking that at the level of Khidr there is no right or wrong, those two words that birth so much judgment. I used to judge myself for being judgmental. It’s an insidious disease and as pervasive as air. It is my thinking that judges, not me. Descartes was wrong when he said, “I think, therefore I am.” It should be, “I am and I also happen to think.” My thinking is like Moses, ego based. I tell James to give his thinking a name. I suggest Nero.

“Whenever Nero starts flapping his gums and criticizes you, tell him to shut up. Nero is not James. Nero is what you have been taught is James.”

He agrees to give it a try. I recently used this technique with a patient of mine. She is a forty year old insurance saleswoman, who should not be in sales. She is in constant meltdown for her perceived failures and mistakes. She calls her thinking mind Bertha, Big Bertha. The method is working. I am more and more convinced that my thinking mind is not who I am. I am using it incorrectly. We all are. Unlike James I am good with myself and so have not given my thinking a name. If I did I’d call it W.

I ask James if he has remembered any dreams lately.

“Just one,” he said. “I think it took place in the future. I’m old, older than Sarah, but not as old you.” James smiles and then laughs at his little jab. I laugh, too.

“My wife is with me,” he continues. “We’ve been together a long time. There are pictures of my children and grand children on the walls. It’s all very real. I’m happy…no, wait. That wasn’t the feeling. I was at peace with myself. I longed to be him, to make him real. We are watching TV, not on a screen, but as a hologram in the room. It was cool. There was a ceremony taking place in Stockholm. I remember it being important to me that I watch it. I have a connection to this particular ceremony.”

I suggest to James that he may have had a glimpse into a probable future and that it is a potential reality happening now. I press James on his age at the time.

“It’s just a guess,” he says, “but based on the pictures of my kids and grandkids I’d say 60-64.”

As I said, James has a great memory, even for the details of a dream.

“Wait a minute,” James says. “There was this life sized medallion hung as a backdrop for the ceremony. It was some bearded guy in relief. His name was on the medallion…Alfred Nobel. There were Roman numerals to the right of him…1902-2052.”

“Nice guess about your age, James. The date on that coin makes you sixty-four. Anything else?” I asked.

“No. I think the thrust of the dream was about peace, being at peace. That’s what I got out of it. I don’t know what the holographic TV bit was about, but I was impressed by it.”

I thought of the nature of a hologram and the net of gems that hangs over the house of Indra.

Sarah understands the dream’s connection to Alex, but the evening is about James. “You want someone to connect with, James,” she said, “someone who can see the world through your eyes so that you don’t have to pretend anymore. You won’t get that from someone else. Remember that, honey. You will only get reflections of yourself. When I see energy I see it changes in relation to my own. It honors my current state of being. It informs me of me.”

James nods his agreement. I rented the 2009 movie, Avatar. I got the 3-D glasses and all. James must be the only American to have not seen the movie. I loved it when it first came out. The imagery was absolutely stunning. The story line was a bit tepid, and its message too blunt and obvious, but the movie’s overall impact on me was impressive. We sat in silence the next two hours and let the movie transport us to its own dimension of space and time.

When it ends James turns to Sarah and I and says, “Their world is a world made for me. I am more like the Navis than I am like the humans.”

Sarah agrees. I felt the human position was overplayed on the dark side, but I understood why two pears would see it that way. The truth be known, I prefer the pear’s perspective. As the shift moves its way forward I think the pears will have a lot to teach the rest of us- the majority-and the Toms and Deans. Time will tell.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Twenty-one

2010-04-12T06:10:00.000-05:00

David Cawley sits reading while reclining on his living room chair. The door bell rings and David invites his guest to enter. An old man, maybe sixty, sixty five, walks in and David jumps out of his chair to greet him. The old man is carrying a thick manila envelope under his arm.

“Dad,” David says. “What a nice surprise. What brings you to Storrs? Julia, it’s dad.”

I feel like I’m watching a movie instead of being in a dream. Julia walks in from the bedroom and gives David’s father a hug. She still has those great legs I saw in my first dream, but then she’s younger in this dream than in the first dream. Julia unburdens her father-in-law of his package and sets it on the table next to her husband’s recliner. She takes his spring jacket and he sits on the couch next to his son. He looks ill.

“I promised I’d bring you that.” He points to the manila package.

“Promised who?” David asked.

“Augusto’s wife, Sarah. Before she disengaged she called me to Augusto’s place in the Eldorado. I was living in New York then. You know, David, I only saw Augusto for about two years of therapy, but he kept in touch afterward. It surprised me when he died that Sarah took up the relationship with me. I never talked much about it, but she was as special to me as your mother was, God bless her soul. That mug I gave you when you were ten was another promise I made. It was from Augusto. For some reason I didn’t think it was important to tell you until now.”

I wish I could record this. I don’t have Alex’s memory. Obviously I can’t write this down while I’m dreaming. It’s a bit disconcerting listening to someone I knew as a kid, who is now older than me when I knew him, talk about me after I’m dead. I watch David finger the unopened package. He seems in no rush to find out its contents.

“Sarah’s been dead for many years now, dad. Why are you bringing this to me now?”

“Her request was that I bring this to you when you began at the University of Connecticut. How she knew you’d wind up here I didn’t know at the time. Augusto, of course, never had a chance to tell me.”

I don’t like how this conversation is going.

David’s father continued. “Sarah said that Augusto would probably be here in a dream. She said that he was going crazy trying to figure out the function of thought when he was writing The Frog Handled Mug. She asked if you would tell him about thought when I gave you this package.”

“It’s important to my project Dad that I not tell him all of it, and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t spill the beans while you’re here with me. Augusto is lucid in his dreams and he can follow wherever you go. What I will do is give him a hint or two. This is for you, Augusto, courtesy of Sarah’s love for you and her concern for your state of mind.”

David knows I’m watching. No big surprise there. The plasticity of time and events never ceases to boggle my mind. I’m dead in David’s time line and yet I’m alive in mine.

“Had you the time, Augusto, you would have discovered this yourself. Everyone will discover this by 2075. So, here comes your hint. You were right. Thought does not drive action, although it appears so to you. Thought does not generate imagination. Thought does not communicate, but it is related to those things and more. Thought is a tool of who you are. I know you love movies as I do, so your clue is this. Think of Nicole Kidman and the role she plays in the suspense movie involving the United Nations. Now wake up. I want to spend time with my father alone. Bye bye Augusto.”

When I wake up my first thought is, how long does it take to figure out what thought is. The reason I ask myself that question is because David said, ‘had you the time.’ I’m not going anywhere and I’m not stopping until I figure out what is going on in my world. I remember the Nicole Kidman movie. She was an interpreter at the UN. Interpreter, that’s the name of the movie. Is David trying to say that thought is an interpreting device? I’m confused. My thoughts go to the idea of making the complex, simple. I’m over-thinking this whole experience, but I can’t stop.

This is Sarah’s week in Connecticut. I miss her. As I am thinking how much I miss her, my cell rings. It’s Sarah. These coincidences no longer surprise me. Oddly enough, the more I see them as my creation the more they appear in my life. I like that.

“I had a strong impulse to call you, honey. How are you? Is everything alright?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. I told her about my dream.

“How are you feeling?” Sarah asked. “You’re not sick are you? When was your last physical?”

I answer her questions and say, “Maybe David was suggesting that I got so busy with something else that I chose not to finish. God forbid, but if anything happened to you I’d drop this project in a heartbeat. It’s all disconcerting. What do you think about the interpreting thing?”

“I find it hard to believe that we have been misappropriating thought for so many thousands of years, but then there has been a lot of misery for those thousands of years. I interpret energy with thought, but so few people see energy. Thought has to interpret more than that. You are good at interpreting symbols, Augusto. What if everything is a symbol, like in a dream.”

“Hmm. You may have something there, Sarah. It seems to me that if thought interprets then I must feed it enough information to interpret correctly. If Nicole in the movie only heard every other word then she might misinterpret what was said. You know, get in the ball park, but not on the playing field.

“I don’t think everything is a symbol, or at least not a symbol that communicates something. I mean thought tells me a carrot is a certain type of vegetable, and maybe on a simple level that’s the extent of it. But, what about emotions?”

“What about them?” Sarah asked.

“I was working through this the other night. What if thought is designed to interpret our emotional communications, not the feeling, but the communication that the feeling is alerting us to?”

“Are you saying that being angry is communicating something other than I am angry?”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” I said. “David also mentioned imagination. I think imagination also tells me something about me. If it all starts as energy then something has to put that into an understandable form. Hell, even my body talks to me all the time, but what I usually do is attribute what is going on in my body to some external cause. I stub my toe. It causes pain and it was caused by a chair I didn’t see. I catch a cold that was caused by a virus. That’s how I have been using thought. And I don’t think it focuses on why I stubbed my toe. ‘Why’ is not the question I should ask. It goes deeper. I stubbed my toe because in the moment I did it I was not paying attention. The cold’s apparent outer agent is a virus, but I don’t have to trigger it. Maybe I create it to get some time off work, just as Aphrodite created her near downing incident to get out of a messy relationship.”

“Do you think all our communications are about us? That would make sense as far as creating a victimless life. If I create it all then I need to know what it is I am creating.”

For some reason I think of the Okandos. This happens to me often now. People, places and things just pop into my head. “Remember Tanya Okando?” I said. “She said that losing the use of her legs was the best thing that ever happened to her. My guess is this. I think that she was trying to communicate to herself long before losing her legs.”

I tell Sarah about the gas leak and the utility guys and the knocking at my door.

Sarah said, “There must be limitless things that give us the same communication.”

“How so?” I said.

“How many emotions are there? Fifty, maybe? I know at least twenty things that make you mad, hundreds that make you happy, and those are just the ones you create. I think you’re right about the signal escalating until you get the communication. Stub your toe, tear a muscle, break a leg, get thrown from a horse. Didn’t Tanya say that she allowed nothing to get in the way of her goal? She wasn’t listening to herself.”

“She did say that,” I said, “but I don’t think it’s bad to have goals. I encourage my patients all the time to trust in the realization of their goal. The problem lies in their expectations regarding the process that takes them there. Every choice I make, conscious or not, takes me to my goal if I trust in my attaining the goal. If all time is simultaneous then that goal is realized already. It is only my choice not to trust the course the process takes in any moment that diminishes the potential that it will show up. That trust is diminished when I focus on my expectations regarding the process.”

“I’m not sure I follow, Augusto. I’m a woman that loves examples. Give me one.”

“When I was racing marathons and long before my dream era I would have a time goal for the marathon. One of my early marathons was the John English Marathon in Middletown, Connecticut. It started at Wesleyan University. The race was in early March, late February, I can’t remember which. Anyway, I set a 2:45 time goal. I trusted I’d be able to do it, as my shorter distance times supported that pace.”

“What pace?” Sarah asked.

“The pace it would take to run two hours and forty-five minutes for 26.2 miles. That comes out to be 6:18 per mile. Understand?”

“Go On.”

“I have to train pretty hard during the winter, but I expect the race day to be warmer than the weather I had been training in. The training is hard and each time I get an ache or a minor pull I’d begin to lose trust that I’d meet my goal. This is where the process doesn’t follow expectations. The day of the race it is ten degrees and snow is everywhere. This is a 180 from what I expected. I was cooked the first moment I saw the temperature. I hit the wall at twenty miles and the last six miles were the hardest six I ever ran. The temperature and the conditions went so counter to my expectations that it destroyed trust in my goal. I didn’t think that at the time, but I do now.”

“So you’re saying you should have ignored the reality of the day. Why not adjust your time goal,” miss practical Sarah said.

“I’m not talking about bonking in the race, Sarah. Sure, changing my time goal would have kept me from bonking, but I would not have met my goal. Same result…goal not met. It seems that what I believe heavily influences my thinking. I believed that I couldn’t meet my goal in ten degree weather, but I ran with friends who had similar goals and they made it. They said later that the temperature was never an issue. It was for me because I believed it was.”

“So, what does this have to do with thought interpreting?”

“I was paying attention to the weather and not the emotions the weather created. If I had paid attention to my emotions I may have learned that I was blowing my trust. What happened was that I trusted what I believed. I believed I could not run a 2:45 in cold weather. Get it?”

“Sure I get it, Augusto. I was just trying to work the details out of you. I liked that line, ‘I trusted what I believed.’ Maybe that is what David was getting at all along. You will create what you believe, because you trust what you believe. That part of you that creates will create everything you believe, and you can tell what it is you believe by observing what you do.”

“What I do is the expression of the belief and not an expression of what I think. Is that what you mean?”

“Yes,” Sarah said. “You can tell yourself until doomsday that you can walk on water. You can even say you believe you can walk on water. To me, that is thought doing a job it is not intended to do. You can’t think yourself into not sinking, but you can believe yourself into it.”

“How do you build the belief?” I asked.

“I suppose you build it through experience,” Sarah said.

“Who the hell is going to be the first one to walk on water…never mind.”

“It might have carried over to the rest of us if we didn’t believe he was different than us. It proved to the people of that time he was God, even though I don’t think that was what Jesus way trying to do. It is what we made out of it. Too bad, I’d like to walk on water that isn’t ice.”

“Do you think that from the very beginning we’ve been using our thinking in a way that was never intended?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “I don’t think so. It’s in our stories, our myths. The change took place as we slowly lost trust in our own power. Look at the Australian Aborigines, the ones that haven’t been completely westernized. They remain connected to the earth. It speaks to them. I just can’t see that we started off on the wrong foot with our thinking. It devolved to what it is now. We changed somehow, lost sight of our origin. Maybe this shift is a return to that and more. I don’t know. It’s still so foreign to me. I can imagine how others are having difficulty assimilating what is going on. It’s difficult for me and I’ve always been outside the box. There is so much conflict and trauma. It has to look like Armageddon to many.”

“This is what I think,” I said. “Some of us are put together in such a way, and I’m one of them, that we need to know the mechanics of what’s going on. Maybe twenty years from now more people will be consciously aware of this big change. Now they have no reference for it and so we see these stories of the end of times. I think it is the end of times, but not in the sense of global destruction. It’s the end of one game and the beginning of a new one. I’m trying to make sense of it all for me and I’m becoming more and more convinced that I’m making it far too complex.”

“You enjoy getting at the truth, Augusto. You’re like the ancient alchemist, trying to make gold out of dirt, but sometimes you forget that it is your truth you are searching for. This is about you and your search for understanding. Everyone goes about it differently. Beliefs are what drive perception. Beliefs are the films that feed our individual projectors and if you can find just two people that believe the same way about everything then you win the brass ring. That’s why the word ‘normal’ has caused us so much grief.”

“This book is turning out to be a personal journal, isn’t it?” I said.

“It has always been that,” Sarah said. “I don’t think it’s meant to be a primer on the shift. It’s your own personal primer, one man’s response to a changing world. During these past few years it is you that has changed and so has your primary experience. You can’t fix James. You can’t change me. You can’t control whether Alex wins the Nobel Prize. Nobody needs fixing. Nobody needs saving except what our thinking tells us, and we have been using our thinking in a manner it was never designed for. Didn’t David say, ‘what do you believe and what are you doing’?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Maybe it is as simple as that. Maybe doing those two things will get you directly across the street. You’ve been circling the globe to get to the other side of the street.”

“I’ll let that percolate, Sarah. I have to go. It’s Monday morning and that means Chuck Tynedale.”

I said goodbye to Sarah and left my apartment for my weekly 10am appointment with Mr. OCD.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Twenty-two

2010-04-12T06:09:00.001-05:00

If nobody needs fixing and nobody needs saving then what the hell have I been doing? My adult life has been about doing one or the other, fixing and saving. So if Chuck doesn’t need fixing, why am I seeing him? Maybe because he thinks he needs fixing. Me telling him he’s ok would serve no purpose except to confuse him. “I’m not ok,” he’d say. “I hate my life and I hate the restrictions I put on myself. It’s your job to fix me. It’s what I’ve been paying you for all these years.”

What do I say to that when I don’t believe it any longer? David said, “What do you believe, Augusto. What are you doing?” David Cawley didn’t say what does Chuck believe and what is Chuck doing? What Chuck believes and what Chuck does is up to Chuck, not Augusto DeRosa Ph.D. But, he is part of my dance and I am part of his. I have not made him part of my experience for me to ignore him. I have to accept his choices and who he is without judgment. I don’t have to like him, although I do. I hear Chuck’s knock. It’s 9:45am. Nothing changes. I let him knock twice before answering simply because I felt like it.

“Where were you?” Chuck said. I know what he meant by his question. I choose to ignore it and walk to my office. Chuck follows, waiting for my answer, which never comes.

“Tell me about your week,” I said. His feet are perfectly parallel to each other on the floor. I wonder how many lives we’ve shared together.

Chuck straightens his tie that is already perfectly straight. “Same-o, same-o,” he said.

I just sit there gazing into his bulging brown eyes. I think he gains a pound each time I see him. I wait. I say nothing. He’s uncomfortable with that. I notice he moves his right foot forward a fraction of an inch, but he doesn’t look. I try not to judge how different he is compared to me. It’s odd allowing him his differences without attaching good or bad to them. Hey, they are not behaviors I would choose for myself, but then Chuck is not me. I don’t know what he has chosen to explore in this particular life. Fifteen minutes pass and he still says nothing. Not too long ago I would have felt forced to speak up. I hated lulls in conversation and felt responsible for keeping them going. The conversation, that is, not the lulls. I feel a twinge of that now, but nothing like before.

“Aren’t you going to ask me anything?” Chuck says.

“Tell me about your week,” I say again. His right foot moves forward another inch. They are clearly not parallel. Progress! Chuck looks at his watch. I know he’s computing the cost of his silence. That’s what accountants do. I cannot suppress a smile.

“I met someone,” Chuck said. “A woman.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I met her at a drug store in the section where they sell all the sanitizers. She’s clean, squeaky almost. She doesn’t see anyone.”

“You mean she’s blind,” I said. I had never seen Chuck Tynedale laugh until then.

“No, no, no,” he said. “She doesn’t see a shrink for her compulsions. She’s fine with them. I’d like to be fine with mine.”

“So be fine with them,” I said. “What’s been keeping you from that?”

“You,” he said, “and everyone else. Everyone thinks I’m screwed up. This woman’s name is Alice. She says that I should ignore them, that a big part of what makes me unhappy is believing what other people say about me.”

“Makes sense to me,” I said.

“Then why have you been seeing me if you don’t think I need help?”

“I did, but I’ve been changing,” I said.

“I noticed,” Chuck said. “I like you better now. You don’t look at me like I’m fucked up. You did before, but I was used to it. Everyone looked at me that way. Alice doesn’t. It’s nice. It makes me relax.”

“Do you want to stop seeing me? See how things go with Alice, or maybe I can be like Alice and stop looking at you like you’re fucked up. I really don’t think you need to be fixed, Chuck. You’re the only one left in this twosome that thinks you do. Have you had a date with Alice?”

“Yes,” Chuck said. “We’ve met four times now.”

“Really!” I said. “Where have you gone on your dates?”

“Nowhere,” Chuck said. “We meet each week at the Walgreen sanitizer aisle. We’re both anal about the time we go to places. I told her I go to the Piggly Wiggly every Thursday at 4pm. She started showing up there even though she always went at 3pm on Wednesdays. That’s what told me she’s interested.”

I try to be neutral in my assessment of their behavior. It doesn’t surprise me that two OCD’s would behave that way, but keeping judgment out of it is work. I decide to tell Chuck about my dream of Arthur and Dr. Smythe. When I finished Chuck stared at his feet.

“It’s like they have a mind of their own,” he said. “My feet, I mean.”

“Maybe they do,” I said. “But, maybe their mind is tightly linked to yours.”

“I wonder if I was like this in other lives. Arthur didn’t seem to be OCD.”

“It didn’t seem like he was,” I said. “I think that his job taught him to fear germs, even though they didn’t know about germs back then. It seems to me that you have allowed the influence of Arthur, but you are autonomous. It is your choice, Chuck.”

“You’re talking again,” he said.

“I know. It’s a habit, but one that I’m not adverse to. Your OCD is a habit. It is serving you in some way or you wouldn’t keep doing it. I only saw Arthur in that one dream. He was a devoted family man and so filthy that you’d be forced to bathe just because the light from him hit your retinas. Let me say this as clearly as I can. There is nothing wrong with you except what your thinking tells you is wrong.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Chuck said. “There’s not much wrong with you.”

“Not much wrong?”

“Well, your nose is bigger than normal, like that actor Ben Kingsley, and you’re shorter than normal. You should move to Japan, or Greece. Is there a place where people are both short and have big noses?”

“Very funny, Chuck. You were being funny, right?”

Chuck smiles and from that point we just shoot the shit. For the last twenty minutes of our session Chuck and I forget he is OCD. When he leaves it strikes me that Chuck is only OCD when he is doing OCD things and yet he is defined by those things. I have applied labels all my life without a second thought. Chuck decided to continue with the new me and I reminded myself to discuss the idea that for most of Chuck’s day his label doesn’t apply. If Chuck can believe his new friend Alice, she doesn’t seem to have a problem. The problem lies in the eyes of the beholders. Good for Alice if that is the case. However, Chuck feels his OCD limits him, and if he believes he is limited then he will create limitations. He trusts what he believes.

Chuck’s session gives me a boost. I’m looking forward to my last session with David Cawley the younger. I know this is confusing because David Cawley the younger is actually the father of David Cawley, aka Augusto DeRosa. On rare occasions simultaneous time throws things together that way. It blows my mind every time I see the little guy. He’s getting bigger, though. David is twelve now, only twenty-seven years ‘till my next birthday. Eleanor Cawley accompanies him. I’ve never met his father and he doesn’t talk much about him. David is far less combative than when we first met. That may be due to his getting his own way, a real no-no in today’s shrink community. They call it enabling. In my current view I see it as fostering the belief that they can create what they want. We’ll see…if I live long enough. I have a present waiting for David as a memento of our time together.

“Go ahead and open it,” I said.

“It’s little,” he says, as he unwraps the small box.

I see the look of disappointment on his face as he pulls the green mug from the box. “What’s this for,” he said. “It looks like a coffee mug with a frog on it.”

“It’s not to drink from until you get older,” I said. “I got it to remind you that you can choose anything you want, that you’re in charge of you. When you’re feeling low and believing that someone else is choosing for you just look at the mug when you’re near it and remind yourself that if something happens to you then you chose it.”

We spoke often of choice over the past few years.

“I like it,” David said. “It’s different, like me. Thank you Dr. DeRosa.”

“You’re welcome, David. There’s one more thing,” I said. “When you grow up and have a child I want you to give it to him. He may not need it then, but I think it will be time for you to pass it along. Will you do that for me?”

“Sure,” he said, “but I’m not going to have any kids.”

“Most boys your age say that. But, if you do, will you pass it along?”

“Yeah, but I’m not going to.”

It occurs to me that David will likely create a probable when the time comes for him to decide to be a father. I realize that he has already created many, just as I had by the time I was twelve.

“A lot of my friends are like me, you know.”

“You mean stubborn? Just kidding, David. That comes from old thinking.”

“They’re not stubborn. They just know what they want and don’t want. Why don’t you guys try to figure out what each kid is like when they’re little instead of making us all do the same things? I have a few friends who like the way school is, but most of us are bored to death. You can’t really pick what you like until college, and by then I think a lot of kids forget what it was they liked when they were little.”

“That’s a good idea, David. I believe that is going to come about, and do you know who is going to make it happen?”

“Who?” David asked.

“You,” I said, “your generation and the next. When you refuse to tolerate being taught the same way when you are all so different then the schools will change in response to that. Trust me. It’s going to happen. It is happening in some charter schools.”

“I have a friend that goes to one. He likes it there. I asked mom to send me. She said maybe next year. Could you talk to her about it?”

“I have, David. I think she will, but don’t tell her I said so. Remember what we’ve talked about. If you don’t go to the Charter school it is nobody’s fault. It was your choice. What you choose is what actually happens. Right?”

“Right.”

When Eleanor and David leave I pull my manuscript for the Frog Handled Mug from my desk. I keep a copy here, at home and at Columbia and I carry my flash drive everywhere. My search takes me to the scene where David Cawley is reading Breaking Addictions and then shows me Addiction as Choice. I try to get a timeline on it. He mentions his research on me in the dream and so he is obviously at UConn. In the dream it was Alexander Hastings 82nd birthday. Alex was born in 1993. That would make it 2075, the date of my first dream. David would be thirty-six. Jumping forward in simultaneous time does not follow a straight time line even though my experience of my life does. It makes it difficult to determine what the timeline is. David’s father, my patient, gave him my manuscript around 2065. He’d already have a copy of my book, a published copy, at Alexander Hastings 82nd birthday. I can’t be sure though.

Why did Sarah have David’s father give him my draft copy of the book. Could it be something I wrote in the margins as I edited and reedited? I always do my editing on the printed copy before transferring it to my word processor. I check my manuscript and there are too many comments to go through. Something is off…not right, and I can’t get what it is. I put the manuscript away and type what you just read. Tonight I’ll try and revisit an old dream.

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Twenty-three

2010-04-12T06:07:00.002-05:00

David Cawley sits in his recliner. The two cats are at the bird feeder under the Scotch pine and everything is as it was. He throws Breaking Addiction into the waste basket by his recliner and picks up another book from the table. I look around the room for clues as to the date, but see none, other than it is winter. As I am looking around the room David opens the book to a place near the middle and I peer over his shoulder. It is definitely The Frog Handled Mug. The book is only slightly thicker than I would expect it to be considering where I am now in the writing of it. It makes sense that it would be thicker as I am not finished with it. I decide that Sarah gave David the original manuscript because of my margin notes and as a keepsake of another focus of himself. A sense of relief drifts over my dream state.

Comforted, I decide to do an out of body snap and visit James. It’s 11:30 and he should be awake…somewhere. I have grown proficient at these out-of-body snaps, as I call them. I probably don’t need to do the head snap, but it gives me confidence. I think of James and I’m immediately in an apartment decorated nuevo grunge. That’s not a judgment. It’s an ‘IS’ comment, and the apartment really isn’t that different than the one I lived in when I was their age. I see four young people, three boys and one girl. They’re passing around a blunt. For those of you that are out of the loop on these drug matters, a blunt is marijuana rolled in a cigar wrapper. Primus is playing on their sound system, and a tall fella is playing along on a drum set in the living room. James is singing. He’s good. The girl is planting a hickey on the neck of the third guy, who seems oblivious to it.

It all seems a normal evening of weed induced fun. I know the behaviors opiates induce and these are not those behaviors. I see no zombies in this room, nor do I see soup spoons, straws or oxy crushing implements, just four kids having fun under the influence of a low grade buzz. You may have gathered that I am a proponent of legalizing marijuana. I’ve seen far more damage done by alcohol than I have from marijuana. It’s all choice anyway. Primus is pretty good, so is James. The drummer is isn’t bad either. The other kid still hasn’t noticed the girl attached to his neck. He’s tapping his hands on his legs in time to the beat of the music. The girl gives up in her efforts to arouse what I assume is her boyfriend and disengages her mouth from his neck. He’s left with a purple mark the size of a small eggplant.

I have grown proficient at this out of body stuff and have verified much of what I have seen. In one experiment when Sarah was in Norwich, and I in New York I asked her to stay awake past midnight and to do whatever she wanted. The next morning I called to verify what I saw. My beautiful wife did a pole dance with the bed post. We have a canopy bed in Norwich. Sarah is quite creative that way. She wore a scarlet bikini brief, newly purchased that morning, and nothing else. She set up a camera to record it. Not that I would ever publish the results of my little experiment. I wanted to prove it to myself.

I leave James and his buddies and hop back into my body. I am asleep instantly. Apparently consciousness needs these periods of sleep where there is no dreaming. I have no idea where consciousness goes at that point, but I doubt that it needs rest. My former belief that consciousness resides in the brain is as quaint as the idea that the earth is flat. It has become apparent to me that I live a wholly other life while asleep, as real, but different than the one I live while awake. I find myself in another dream.

David Cawley is old. He knows that I am there. He sits cross legged beneath the Scotch pine outside his living room windows. The birdfeeders are different, but still hang from the lower branches of the tree. It is summer and the birds are not frightened by David’s presence. In fact a few of them rest on his shoulders. The pine is dying, but there remains some green on its upper branches. I look around and there is a group of people assembled around the tree with David in the center. Julia is not there, but Christine, Bill’s wife, is. My book is nestled in the hollow of his legs. I can only see the title, The Frog Handled Mug.

“You all know why you are here, and I thank you for your presence,” David says. “I have explored what I came into this body and into this time and place to explore, and so it is now time for me to go.”

It dawns on me that David is about to take his own life. I look around for an implement by which he will do it, a gun, a hari kari knife, a noose hanging from the tree, a potion. I see nothing.

“Augusto is here. You know him from our book that rests in my lap. He thinks I am about to take my own life and in a sense I am.”

The people around David laugh. I heard nothing funny pass his lips. David is old, but looks fit. He is lucid, his arms well muscled, his breathing deep and regular. His eyes twinkle.

“Augusto has the idea that death is a choice, but has not the experience of it. This is my gift to him so that he need not fear death. His patient Elizabeth, who you’ve all read about in the book, told him death is a choice. In our time it remains a choice, but it has become conscious. In this year of 2126 the shift has been fully inserted into our reality for fifty-one years. Soon there will be few left from the time of the forgotten self. All will be of the time of the remembered self. I leave behind Augusto and The Frog Handled Mug as a reminder of a time of confusion, of conflict and trauma, but most importantly a time of awakening. It is a story not for Augusto’s time but for ours, so that we might better understand the courage of those who assisted the shift into being.”

The people surrounding David seem almost jubilant at his apparent imminent passing. Julia’s absence suggests that she has already passed. I doubt she’s at the local Walmart during such an auspicious occasion. I wonder if Walmart is still Walmart. It is surreal watching this celebration of a life just moments away from its completion. So much is different than 2012 and yet so much is the same. Does everyone leave this way? I doubt it. I assume many will leave early just as they do today. Some explorations takes less time than others, but will they choose a more dramatic way to exit? Maybe. We humans love drama. There are as many ways to explore a life as there are lives, actually many more if one considers all the probables. I feel strange watching myself die, and yet, if all time is simultaneous then all of history occurs in one big bang.

“There is no need to be confused, Augusto,” David says. “I’ve read the words you have penned about this dream sequence. There is nothing to figure out. There is no method. There is only trust, trust in everything that you create, for every moment is a new creation, and every creation is filled with value and purpose. You live in a difficult time, a time where one reality is replacing another. You have been invaluable to us in our time. You have allowed us a glimpse into your mind and with that glimpse came an understanding of the forgotten self. So much is changing it is no wonder you are confused. Your ways are as confusing to those born today as ours is to you. What is happening in your time is wondrous, but to many it does not seem so. It may not seem so even to you. Everything will become clear. Everyone will remember.”

Remember what? David stills himself and leaves. It is as simple as that. The process reminds me of my snap method of going out of body. A few of the people that surround him wrap his body in a white cloth and carry him into the house. I wake up and find myself crying. They are not tears of sadness. They are tears of awakening, a gut level knowing that who I thought was a singular being struggling for survival in a world that struggled along with me is in reality the architect of it all. David is dead and yet alive, just as I am dead and yet alive. In my nightly visits I have bounced back and forth through time as though it was as permeable as the air I breathe. I feel the first tenuous roots of trust burrowing into my heart and into my mind. My life has been one of discovering the simple within the complex, and here I find myself turning the simple into the complex. I suppose the process is similar if I eventually get back to the simple.

I wake up to a beautiful December morning. It is Saturday, the day after Pearl Harbor Day 2012 and a five kilometer race is scheduled in Central Park at 10am. I haven’t raced hard in years nor have I trained to race, but I decide to enter and to test the old legs. I feel weightless and ageless. How well I do and how fast I run does not matter. I want to feel myself on that edge again where listening to my body was akin to an Indy 500 mechanic listening to the whine of a million dollar racing machine. I have always been good at listening to my body. It is telling me today that it wants to race, not against an age group standard, but within a standard of fun that I have somehow forgotten. I used to love the feeling that I got when my body danced on the razors edge of competition. It looked like pain to an outsider, but to me it was euphoria. I want that feeling again even if I have to do it at an eight minute per mile pace.

I cross the street to Central Park and the doomsday picketers are out in force. December 21st 2012 is less than two weeks away. We should name it gloom and doom day. I wonder if Chuck is here with Alice. She’s done more for Chuck in a few months than I did in years. What is different about Alice that his other two wives didn’t have? It’s probably her allowance of his compulsions. It’s easier to allow when you have them yourself. The runners ignore the end-of-the-world folks. I feel as though I have the inside track on what is going on. There are others, though. I read them regularly on the internet. An old man in tattered clothing and food stained beard stands atop a wooden box. He has wild eyes and long dirty fingernails that dig into the placard he is carrying. The placard reads: Do You Believe, and is hand scripted in red paint that ran down the card as it dried. He stands a hundred meters from the finish line of the race, so unless the cops remove him none of the finishers will miss his message. I wonder how many will notice.

We all believe. I wonder what the fool on the soapbox is referring to. I walk over to him to find out since I don’t want to make the mistake of not paying attention to Jung’s next wise man or fool. He looks at me with darting blue eyes, and smiles.

“Do you believe?” he asks, his voice as wild as his eyes.

“Believe what?” I reply.

“Do you believe you will be saved?”

“Saved from what?” I ask. I’m not expecting a rational conversation, but I am curious about his mind.

The old man raises his arms and placard above his head and yells for all to hear. “Do you believe you will be saved from the end of the world?”

People are laughing. I am not. I am in my knowing and appreciation mode, my new definition for love. Hey, I don’t want to date the guy, but I honor who he chooses to be. A few years ago I would have recommended a long stay at Bellevue for my bearded friend.

“How will the world end?” I ask. “And why do I need to be saved?”

“It will not end by expectation.” he says. “The days as we know them will never be the same.”

I ask again. “Why do I need to be saved?”

“You need to be saved so that I might be saved.”

“How does my being saved, save you?”

“For I do not exist without you.”

In a way he has a point. When I leave this reality he no longer exists in my perception, but he only has a small piece of the puzzle. I wonder how he came to his current understanding. I ask him, but expect the response of a schizophrenic. That’s exactly what I get. He believes in his schizophrenia as much as everyone else does. It makes no sense to me to engage him any further. I thank him and head for the starting line.

When I was racing in my earlier days I never paid much attention to what we called the pack runners. Now I am part of them and the energy is different, not better, just different. The fun is different, not better, just different. Although I press myself I have no need to beat anyone. My only need is to do my best and accept whatever that is for this particular day. I call it having no expectations of the process, which allows me to be fully present in the process. All the runners are in this for their own reasons. There is no right and no wrong in any choice except what our thoughts tell us are right or wrong. Stella Biglow is there with her thirteen year old son, Kyle. A few years back she saw me for severe depression, resulting from her inability to cope with her bipolar son. My counseling was for her depression, but my understanding of bipolar disorder was as bipolar as the disorder itself.

Since my dream era began I have become sensitized to the enormous uptick in the number of children diagnosed with autism, bipolar disorder and ADHD. For me it has become a symbol of my culture’s opposition to any choice that is outside of highway normal, and these children’s opposition to that opposition. I pass her on the race course at the half mile mark and tell her we’ll meet up after the race. I finish ten minutes ahead of her and her son and wait for them at the finish. She looks good as most do who run a 5km race. It is clear that her son ran with his mother rather than race the course hard. He is barely winded. I like Stella. She is a hard working single mother, whose ex left three years after Kyle’s birth. He couldn’t cope with Kyle’s disorder or with Stella’s depression. I think I helped Stella even though Kyle’s bipolar disorder remained as severe as ever. The pills helped, but they took a toll. Stella has kept me up to date on his meds over the years. She trusted me. At one time or other Kyle was on Lithium, Depakene, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Abilify and Risperdal to just mention a few. He often took ten pills a day.

I walk with them to pick up their warm clothing.

“Kyle wanted to run with me today,” Stella said. “He could have run much faster, but I have learned not to oppose him. It’s helped.”

“How so?” I ask.

“Well, Augusto, it came out of total exhaustion. By opposing his tantrums from the moment they began, Kyle simply escalated. A couple years ago he wanted to do something that ordinarily I would have opposed, but I was too tired for the fight I knew would ensue. I gave in immediately.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“He did what he wanted to do, lost interest almost immediately and went back to what he was doing. I couldn’t help but notice, so I tried it again the next time I would have ordinarily opposed what he wanted. Same thing happened. Gradually it dawned on me that what all the doctors referred to as bipolar was, at least for Kyle, an intense desire not to have his choices blocked.”

“I just finished seeing a young boy who fits your description to a T,” I said. “It’s almost as if a generation of young people has popped into the planet that is choice driven. Of course everyone thinks the problem is toxin driven, but none have been found in any of them. On a very personal level it presents the same scenario that drives people to war against each other. How are you doing? I almost forgot to ask.”

Stella laughed. “I knew the question was in there somewhere, Augusto. I’m doing just fine, thank you. And you…you look as fit as ever…but different somehow. I don’t think I would have heard such an exposition from you when I was seeing you. What’s changed?”

“Everything.”

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Twenty-four

2010-04-12T06:03:00.000-05:00

It’s Friday, December 21st, 2012. Doomsday, the shortest day of the year has arrived and we’re all still breathing. Nothing ever seems to happen with these predictions. Columbia is closed for semester break, my practice is put on hold except for the phone, and I’m leaving for Connecticut and Sarah this evening. I won’t be returning to Columbia, but I will return to my practice. I decided that teaching a curriculum that is outdated and dusty is not fun. I cannot teach what I no longer believe. My age made the decision easy. There’s a cold front on the way and it is bringing snow with it. Yesterday I rented an all-wheel drive vehicle in case I don’t get out of New York before the white stuff hits the ground. Like most things snow is both good and bad, a regular yin and yang.

I finish my morning appointments and catch the subway back to the Eldorado. I packed the night before, so except for a few odds and ends I should be able to hit the road by 4pm, not a great time for traffic, but I want to beat the snow. The sky is a deepening gray by the time I walk into my building. I won’t be able to get in a run today so I opt for the stairs. My foot-falls echo off the hard walls, assaulting my ears and my senses. It’s like a prison I visited once on a psych consult. Maybe I’ll suggest a stairwell aesthetic makeover to the building’s homeowner’s association. They won’t go for it. No one ever uses it, except maybe those on the first two floors. I’m sweating by the time I reach my apartment. I shower, throw on some comfortable driving clothes, fill my mug with coffee and sit down to watch a little CNN.

The pundits – sounds like a pseudonym for clowns – are pontificating about voter angst that reared its head during the election. They remind me of Charlie Brown’s teacher who spoke in trumpet sounds. My eyes cross as I listen to them, just as the voters eyes crossed when listening to the same old political drivel out of Washington. The voters let the politicians know they were fed up. Obama was reelected, but over half of the incumbents were thrown out. The shrinking far right and the shrinking far left stayed loyal to their respective parties, but the middle was so full of independents that the two party system is threatened. Fractures are beginning to appear in our system of Government. The voters want the politicians out of their business. I wonder what it will all look like in 2075. I guess I’ll know, but as David Cawley.

There’s a short bit on the predictions of Nostradamus and the Mayan calendar. No one has built steel reinforced concrete bunkers as many did in the fifties, but as usual there is a fringe element that is full of fear. I recall feeling safe when in school we practiced hiding under our desks. We were safe. Nothing ever happened. The fear comes from a misinterpretation of our objective symbols, what most folks refer to as reality. To me the phenomenon of repeated doom and gloom prognostications is more intriguing than anything else. After all, I have seen the future and it exists. The planet and its people still go about their business…but differently. I know that some will die toady as some die every day. Maybe those that die from natural disasters will believe it is doomsday. For them it is. For them the Mayan calendar was prophetic.

My mind flits to Stella Biglow and her son Kyle. She touched on something I had not considered before. Is not opposing something or someone the same as cooperation? Can two people with different wants actually cooperate and get what they want without compromising? Much of my life has been a compromise, a watering down of what I really wanted to something I could actually get. Maybe cooperation would work if I didn’t see it as so black and white. What I typically believe is that if I get what I want, you don’t get what you want. What Stella wanted was peace, no more struggle. What Kyle wanted was a bag of chips before dinner. Stella got what she wanted and so did Kyle. Stella focused on what she wanted for herself and not what she wanted for Kyle, which in that moment was good eating habits, or possibly an empty stomach before dinner. By focusing on her and cooperating with Kyle both got what they wanted. Maybe thought didn’t get enough information to interpret her want before that moment because her attention was always on Kyle. I’ll think about this some more during my drive east.

My cell rings because I still don’t know how to turn on the vibrate function. It’s James. He calls to tell me how much he is looking forward to seeing me and that he has been clean for a month except for beer and an occasional marijuana high. I can hardly condemn him for something that I do and don’t condemn myself for. He tells me he has given up, for the most part, his penchant for comparing himself to a culturally taught standard and that it has helped him disengage from his constant battle with himself. I tell him to see his past as a self created experience that served to get him to this point in his life. It is the Khidr thing which he understands. He tells me that Rose and Charlie are doing better now that much of the family drama has subsided, but that Charlie still holds to the path he believes all men should follow. His choice I guess. I wonder who Charlie is underneath all of his shoulds. I wonder who any of us are under all the thou shalts and thou shalt nots. I settle on my belief that Charlie is who he is and not who I or anyone else thinks he should be. That’s enough. James tells me to be careful driving, as the snow has started to fall in Connecticut. I say goodbye and grab my bag. It’s time to challenge the elements.

I hop the subway for Pelham Bay where the rental car office is. I rent in Pelham Bay as it is the last subway stop and gets me out of the city without having to drive through it. The sky reminds me of a pregnant woman moments away from launching the little BOJ into earth orbit. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, BOJ is bundle of joy. The clouds are bearing down and pushing. I can almost hear the groans. I’m not looking forward to this, but that is offset by my anticipation of seeing Sarah. She is well worth the risk even if she doesn’t think that seeing her one day sooner is worth risking life and limb. Since it never crossed my mind to delay my trip I doubt I created a probable Augusto DeRosa who is now sitting in my apartment. Maybe I should have.

My car is ready and I’m out of the rental lot by 4:15pm. It is the shortest day of the year and the sun, obscured by a thick blanket of gray, is beginning to dip below the horizon. I’m uncomfortable about this trip, but ignore the feeling or intuition, or whatever it is. My wireless receiver and recording system is operational. I suspect I’ll be chattering away to keep my mind off my nagging fear about this trip. A few minutes later I’m on I95. The snow is beginning to fall and the traffic, speeding along at 60mph, is bumper to bumper as I expected it would be. So far no one is giving the snow any respect, including myself. The faster I go the sooner I’ll arrive at my destination. Until, that is, the snow grabs me by the throat and forces my respect. What is this feeling I have?

I reach Greenwich. The sky is now ten centimeters dilated and the BOJ is in full flight. The snow has everybody by the throat except for a few adrenaline junkies. Traffic is heavier now than when I left Pelham Bay. The speed limit is under the control of nature’s slippery blanket. What do you believe, Augusto? What are you doing? I believe this is a dangerous time to be traveling and I trust what I believe. I should find a motel and spend the night in safety, but I don’t. People are braking and cars are skidding, but so far there are no collisions to further slow traffic. Ninety miles to the safety of home and hearth. That doesn’t sound like much if you live in Texas or Nebraska, but it’s a light year away on New England’s I95.

I am breaking my new rule of paying attention to impulses and intuitions. My old patterns and my old thinking are still entrenched in many ways. I have the concepts, but not the experience. I try to relax and consciously release the tension in my hands, shoulders and back. They were tied in a Gordian knot. I know I am tense. My body just told me so. Why am I so driven to press on when every feeling in my body is screaming, “hunker down.” I’ve driven in messes like this before, but never with this feeling.

Where is my attention? It is on the road and the cars around me. It is also on my thinking, and my thinking is doing less interpreting than it is obsessing about what I am feeling. Ok, ok, the feeling is what? Confusion…fear. It certainly isn’t trust. What is the confusion about? Think! NO! Don’t think. Pay attention to what I am doing, and not what I am thinking. Ok. I am confused about the competition between my impulse to pull into a motel and my ‘want’ to continue on to Sarah. It’s not that I won’t see her again if I spend the night in a motel. Or is it? What is the fear about? Which is real, my impulse or my desire to get home? I’ve been taught to disavow impulses. Thought interprets the energy of the impulse into the words, “get off the road,” but I have trained thought all my life to ignore impulses. Thought also interprets the communication of the emotion, but the emotion is confusion and fear. It has nothing to do with getting home.

My problem lies in not having experienced this confusion before while driving in a snow storm. I never had an impulse to pull off the road and into a motel. I was always a good driver in the snow and always made it to my destination. Where is this impulse coming from? It certainly isn’t coming from thought. Thought is merely putting the impulse into a language I can understand. What am I doing? I am driving in the snow to see my beloved wife. How do I simplify this? This is an either/or choice. It need not be so difficult. To put this seemingly simple choice into perspective, it feels like Sophie’s choice, and I mean in no way to trivialize her gut wrenching decision to select one of her children to live and one to die at the hands of the Nazis. That is how torn I am in this moment. It is surreal, but I press on. I feel the sweat on my forehead and turn the heat down. None of this makes sense to me.

I turn on the radio hoping the music will divert my attention from my thinking. I had a patient in my early years of psychotherapy who was an incessant talker. I think she hired me because she had no friends left that would listen to her. Put her in a room with a terrorist for an hour and he’d beg to share what he knows. Either that or he’d find a way to either blow out his ears or his brains. After a month I had to discharge her from my practice. If I saw her one more time I feared either for my sanity or her murder. Sometimes you just have to do what feels right for you. My current conundrum reminded me of her, and I can’t decide what is worse, her mouth or my thinking.

The music is not helping, but I am making progress, not in my understanding, but toward my destination of Norwich, Connecticut. However, the closer I get to Norwich the more insistent my impulse becomes. The traffic thinned out after New Haven and I expected my impulse to decrease in its intensity based on the lessening density of traffic and the closeness of my destination. The reverse of what I expected is happening. In this one trip I am falling back into all of my old habits. I didn’t trust in achieving my goal. I had expectations regarding the process of getting there. I ignored an insistent impulse and kept my thinking mind revving at maximum speed. None of it made sense. I know better, but don’t do what I know. I am approaching Old Saybrook and the Connecticut River. The snow is still falling, but I95 has one well plowed lane. Thirty miles to go. Almost there. There is a motel in Old Saybrook that sits right off the exit. I can see it. I have to fight my arms from turning the wheel toward the exit.

The car begins its climb up to the Connecticut River Bridge. Old Lyme is on the other side. I slow down. Bridges are birthing places for ice, but I cross without incident and enter another birth place. Lyme disease is named after the town I am passing through. There is a heavy deer population in this area of the state, which means there is an even heavier deer tick population. Deer ticks carry the Lyme spirochete bacteria, but don’t worry, you’re safe in winter. I pick up speed after the bridge and settle at 45mph. Suddenly, the car in front of me brakes hard and swerves left. Oh my God………

THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter Twenty-five

2010-04-11T19:39:00.002-05:00

The five point buck missed the car in front of Augusto DeRosa and leaped head first through his windshield. When the rescue vehicles made it to the scene Augusto was already dead. The buck’s antler speared Augusto’s chest and punctured his heart with a hole the size of an adult male’s thumb. He died instantly. Sarah eventually retrieved his recording system and transcribed the last chapter then tucked it away unfinished, awaiting the time my father would deliver it to me. Hints that Augusto would not finish the The Frog Handled Mug were interspersed throughout his dreams, but he was unable to see them for what they were. Of course that could have changed, but Augusto had finished with what we here in post-shift reality call value fulfillment. My project, which I had leaked to Augusto in his dreams, was to finish his book and to present it to a post-shift world as an insight into the mind of one individual struggling through the vast changes that were occurring at the beginning of the 21st century.

During that time the shift had made it into the conscious awareness of many, but to most it was simply a bad time to be alive. Very few knew they were participating in a real game changer. In reflecting on my life as Augusto DeRosa it was a time of confusion and despair, but most of all it was a time of awakening. Most, however, only saw the confusion and despair. To my readers of the late 21st century I say this: the choice of those to be alive during a time of such immense change required vast courage, but more importantly, great love. As you know now, Augusto was right in his intuition about love. It is a knowing and an appreciation, a knowing that who I am is also who you are and that all I experience is in cooperation with all I interact with. The appreciation lies embedded in the knowing. It is an appreciation of my willingness and your willingness to freely and with love share our energy to be formed in whatever way each of us deems best. Augusto’s use of the Khidr metaphor was close to how this works.

I assume you would like to know what happened to the central characters of Augusto’s story and how they were related by way of other focuses. Sarah never remarried and lived out her life where she first met Augusto. She eventually wrote her own book that can be accessed in the web archives. It is called My Life as an Intermediate and was published in 2025 in digital form two years before she disengaged. We know now what those of Augusto’s time did not know, but that he intimated in his analogy of oranges, apples and pears. We as humans have three different perceptual orientations, the intermediate being the least common and the most difficult to understand. There is no need to go into them here, as we all know them. Sarah and Augusto share many lives together. In fact, my wife Julie is a focus of Sarah’s dandelion. We call that dandelion Essence. In some lives we are siblings, some parent and child, and in others simply friends. As you know we love to spend time together with friends. We do this in our many focuses together as well. We also do it with adversaries, but the adversarial relationship only exists in physical focus. Within Essence there is no good or bad. It is a construct of physical existence.

Alex is still with us and so there is no need to go into any detail regarding his life other than to say that he and James are brothers in many of their other focuses. As you know from the dream James related to Augusto and Sarah he straightens out his life, so to speak, as it really never needed straightening within the essence of who he is. James has many challenging focuses. You could say that he is like a rock face climber when it comes to his physical explorations. They are always edgy. Rose and Charlie eventually divorced, getting from each other what they had come together to get. Charlie never worked through his shoulds and should nots, but remained value fulfilled until the ripe old age of ninety. Rose returned to her early flower child roots and remained close to James and her grandchildren. She found that by being true to her authentic self her understanding of her beloved Jesus grew in accordance. She and James have many tumultuous lives together as husband and wife. In his life with Augusto, James eventually realized his dream of finding meaningful experience in the music industry. He is still value fulfilled in that life and is the founder of Second String Music, a company we all know and appreciate.

Augusto’s many clients were what we know as pass-throughs, people that have shared interesting lives with him, but whose intent in this life allowed for only a brief contact with Augusto. None of us like losing contact with old friends and so create many such encounters in our lives, some as brief as an hour or a day. Everything is connected. Chuck married Alice and grew to live comfortably with his many compulsions. Alice is also his wife in Chuck’s Arthur focus during the time of the plague. His obsession with keeping his feet parallel comes from a focus he has as a high wire circus performer in the 1800’s. His act required that his feet remain perfectly parallel while standing on a ball that sat atop the wire. Gina, Alice’s name then, stood atop his shoulders when his right foot slipped out of parallel and she fell to her death. Giacomo, his name in that focus, was able to grab hold of the wire and save himself. The Giacomo focus continues to influence other focuses.

The forgotten self, what Augusto referred to as pre-shift people, had misused thought for so long that they actually believed that thought drove action. You can easily see this in Augusto’s deep confusion about thought. It is hard for us to understand that confusion, but it was so real and so deep as to have gone unseen for most of history. As Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” Very few disagreed. Augusto was right when he said, “I am and I also happen to think.” We understand that our thinking is merely a tool of who we are, but imagine what it must have been like for a few generations of people who chose to live and assist the shift into completion. It is easy to see how they felt their world was either coming to an end or being flushed down the toilet. Augusto was good at seeing the abstract nature of his objective reality. Sarah‘s insight was accurate when she told Augusto that there are an infinite number of ways for us to create an experience that generates the feeling signal of anger, or of any other emotion. There were many at the turn of the century just like Augusto and Sarah. Of Interest was Jung’s quote: “The wise man who is not heeded is counted a fool, and the fool who proclaims the general folly first and loudest passes for a prophet and Fuhrer, and sometimes it is luckily the other way round as well, or else mankind would long since have perished of stupidity.” Fortunately for all of us the fools turned into wise men simply because people began to listen.

As all of you know, there is no fate, there is no destiny there are no ‘done deals.’ Everything is choice, and choice will not be denied. The children of Augusto’s time knew this and acted it out for all to see. My father and Kyle made that point clear to Augusto. Today there are no labels by which the forgotten self corralled themselves. Those labels were believed by the people that applied them and believed by those from which the labels hung. Augusto said, “I trust what I believe,” and so it was during the time of the forgotten self. The problem was that no one paid attention to what they believed. This is why I asked Augusto, “what do you believe?” He did not understand the question at first and so I asked him to pay attention to what he does. He began to understand that in the doing he will find the belief that drives his perception.

Throughout the history of the forgotten self there was a sense that each life had meaning and purpose. Augusto also sensed this, but as his dream era progressed his understanding deepened and changed. Often the forgotten self believed that it was important that they do good in the world, that their life’s purpose was somehow linked to their religious beliefs. What they did not understand and what Augusto was approaching in his conceptual understanding, was that no life is any more or any less valuable than any other. How could it be when in the deepest sense all consciousness is One. To us consciousness abhors a lack of choice. It is ever changing, ever seeking new experience. We know that we are consciousness experiencing itself in physical form and that each focus of attention comes into the world with a particular intent it desires to explore. Augusto was close to understanding that intent in his life was the exploration of finding the simple in the complex.

During the 175 years it took for the shift to be fully inserted the forgotten self slowly awakened to the understanding that who they are is vastly greater than what they had been taught to believe. Jesus and Siddhartha Gautama, and many others had the vision to pierce through the veil of forgetfulness; a veil not imposed by some outside agency, but a self-imposed veil. It was a rule of the game that the forgotten self agreed to abide by.

There was a time, early in their lives, when a single blade of grass held as much wonder as the Apollo program putting several men on the moon; when a hummingbird suspended over an open hibiscus was as mesmerizing as a smart-bomb blasting through the door of an Afghan cave, or when a total eclipse of the moon was so much more than a ‘coincidental’ alignment of moon, earth and sun. There was a time, although the memory of it fades under the cascade of learned beliefs, when the mere sight of a butterfly sent their hearts racing. For the forgotten self these early memories were replaced by belief driven fear and caution. Augusto lived within the dying throes of an old mythology that had robbed his world of its magic. He experienced the beginning struggle as the old tried to plug the dike against the onrush of the new. It was a difficult time of great polarizations.

At the dawn of the twentieth century the veil began to lift as the shift was initiated. The forgotten self struggled to free themselves from the beliefs and myopia of the mass-mind in which they had been submerged for so many thousands of years. Augusto’s love of Jung was no accident as there are no accidents. Jung referred to collective thinking as the mass-man, an individual so conditioned by his culture that he is unable to see himself. In many ways Augusto was CG Jung’s mass-man, so trapped by mass cultural beliefs that he could not escape their effect or even recognize the beliefs through which he conducted his daily life.

The mythology of the forgotten self instilled the belief that the earth was nothing more than external matter that their five senses were able to perceive. A stone is hard and potentially dangerous; water is wet and cannot be breathed; winter is cold, summer is hot; plants and animals are food to sustain their bodies and all meaning is contained in the utility of an object. As the shift struggled for air the forgotten self began to remember. Nature began to change; much like a caterpillar changes into a butterfly, and along with the outer metamorphosis a more important inner metamorphosis was taking place. The old mythology told them they were ravenous caterpillars, bent on consuming the world. The more the better. It was a world of the survival of the fittest. To swim downstream with the school was safe. Until the dawn of the 20th century they were content with the rubber-stamp of mass-man. It was the wide way. It was the only way they knew, for they did not know who they are. Few ever passed through the narrow gate of a life lived authentically with the freedom of choice.

The new mythology of the shift continued its rise to the surface and the caterpillar slowed its eating, driven by an undeniable call that was as irresistible as Paul’s on the road to Damascus. Conflict, crisis and trauma sent Augusto into the pupa stage, that period of inactivity in the metamorphosis that precedes the adult stage, the butterfly. It was a stage similar to the symbology of Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness and the Buddha’s six years of searching for enlightenment, although it didn’t seem that way to Augusto. By the time he emerged from the chrysalis of the forgotten self, wings damp and folded, he had a dim sense that the world may have something to tell him about himself. As a butterfly the world became a literal projection of Augusto’s inner world.

The new world mythology turned Augusto’s world of matter and experience into metaphor, an outer projection of an equally real inner world where consciousness is a’priori to matter. His old mythology screamed of goals and ignored the moment, while the new whispered of something called ‘Now;’ and non-attachment to goals. A blade of grass is a process, a lifetime of growth. Day by day the grass reaches for the sun, only to be cut down by a hungry goat or a whirling blade of steel. Over and over it grows, only to be beaten back. The forgotten self did not understand that it is not the sun the grass seeks, but rather the simple experience of being, of reaching for the sun. With their focus always on the goal rather than the process of being, the forgotten self was never fully present in the moment. Tanya Okando eventually understood this. The new mythology extols the life of a blade of grass; it extols the life to be found in the present moment, for it is the only moment we have.

Augusto’s new mythology told him the truth of duality. It speaks of good and bad and how his vision of such things was clouded by the slow march of time, and so he brought the 18th Sura of the Koran into his life. Khidr taught Augusto that a forest fire, at first glance, appears as a greedy fire-breathing dragon, devouring all life in its path; unconcerned with property values or spotted owls. A mindless devastation later turns out to be a masterful grooming, a cooperation between fire and forest. It became a conscious awareness for him. As the old was swept away to make room for the new Augusto began to interpret his outer world much like he interpreted his dreams. Perception didn’t just take in the world, it projected it outward for him to see.

The forgotten self as seen through the eyes of Augusto DeRosa saw that everything is a communication, everything is a communion. Spring became more than the end of winter and the harbinger of summer, it became the symbol of rebirth, of the new replacing the old in each and every moment. In the new mythology winter goes from representing increased heating bills and ice-slick roads to a time of drawing-in and reflection. The seasons of the earth are reflective of the phases of our lives, ever changing and one no more valuable than the other, just different. As the remembered self we know this. When the forgotten self valued only the summer they blinded themselves to the gifts of winter, spring and fall.

We remember the old mythology from our history books and from our connection with past focuses. The forgotten self believed that it is a dog-eat-dog world and that only the fittest survive. It seemed so true, for who of them could argue with the king of the jungle, and who of them dared stand in the path of a charging elephant the size of a sixteen-wheeler. But slowly, as the shift progressed, they came into a different view of the world. Gradually it dawned on them that the lion does not sit upon the Serengeti by itself. He cannot survive without the Wildebeest and Gazelle, nor can they survive without his thinning their herds. It is all a cooperative venture; an enterprise signifying a whole, not separate parts as the old myth told them.

Augusto and others began to see a joint enterprise of the strong and the weak, a play of opposites, or as Augusto described it, a dance. Destroy one and both disappear, indeed, without one the other could not be discerned. How can we recognize weakness without having experienced strength? How can we feel love without having known hatred? Is there a point where cold becomes hot or low becomes high? We’re told that the hottest hot and the coldest cold feels the same. If we leave our front door and walk straight for 33 thousand miles we complete a circle. Cycles and circles. Nature is full of them. We are full of them. Augusto spent his life becoming aware of this.

Augusto’s book, The Frog Handled Mug is about change, a change that must first take place within the individual. The world will change in response, for it is a reflection of the individual and his intent of exploration. Before his death he began to understand that the beautiful must bless the ugly, for without them they would not know of their beauty. He understood that beauty is the gift of the ugly. The athlete must bless the klutz, the shapely must bless the obese, the strong must bless the weak, and the popular must bless the outcast, for without each other we would not be able to discern who each of us is. This is the gift of duality, and this book is Augusto’s gift to us. I finish his work with a favourite quote of his from Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha:

“Have you also learned the secret from the river, that there is no such thing as time?… The river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth.”
The End

LOVE

2009-09-24T11:25:00.003-05:00

There is a part of you deep inside, buried by layer upon layer of beliefs we hold as truths that knows what I am about to write about.

The Eskimos have more words for snow than you can shake a stick at, and yet we have but a single word for one of the most complex emotions in the human experience. All of our uses for the word ‘love’ seem to connote varying degrees of affection; affection for an experience, for people, for things, for places. The word can get quite watered down and washed out depending on how often it is used and what it is referring to. My love for hamburgers is not the same as my love for my children, although both uses of the word refers to affection. It’s not as though we suffer because of our one word for the many degrees of affection. So why write about it?

I write about it because we are consciously unaware of the deepest meaning of the word. In Transformation of Myth Through Time, Joseph Campbell writes of five orders of love. Of the highest order he says, “The highest order of love is where there is nothing but love - mad, engaged, illicit, careless of the rules of the world, a breakthrough into the transcendent. This is the comparable experience to that of saving somebody at the risk of your own life. Passion, impulse has taken over to
such an extent that the world has dropped off.” Many of us have experienced this order, but the second part of it, the part where we save another at the risk of our own life, hints at the meaning of love I want to address. It really doesn’t have to do with affection, especially when saving the life of a stranger. So what is this deepest meaning of love that sends us into harm’s way to save another with no concern for our own being?

To accept the meaning of love that I wish to put forward requires a bit of a makeover of our understanding of who we are. Our experience tells us that we are individual hunks of matter only rudimentally connected to those around us. If I cut my finger I bleed and you don’t. Chaos theory, however, tells us that everything affects everything else. The most familiar phrase is that a
butterfly flapping its wings in Mexico can ultimately result in a tornado on the Oklahoma plains. For us to understand and then accept the deepest meaning of love we must first understand that we are all connected; the paradox being that we are separate yet one with everything at the same time. NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING we experience is accidental. It may appear so in the moment, but that is the ego’s interpretation.

There is a wonderful tale in the 18th Sura of the Koran. The story involves Moses and the guiding angel, Khidr. The two are traveling together and come upon a small village. To Moses’ horror, Khidr sinks all the boats in the bay. Moses regards this as an evil, but later learns that there were robbers about that were ready to steal all the boats. By sinking them Khidr saved them for the villagers. Khidr then attacks a young man and kills him. This evil again shocks Moses, who later learns that the man was about to kill his parents and that it was better for him to die at the hands of Khidr than to become his parent’s murderer. The last straw is when Khidr has a wall collapse in the village. As per his habit, Moses is again shocked at this evil. Only later is it discovered that the collapsed wall unearthed a hidden treasure for two orphans. Khidr is forced to leave Moses as he cannot see the hidden goodness in the momentary acts of apparent evil. Here Khidr has the larger viewpoint of the Self, while Moses is stuck in the smaller view of the ego. What the story intimates, but does not explicitly say is that both Moses and Khidr represent aspects of each individual, but it is Khidr that represents that aspect of ourselves that chooses. Most of us would agree with Moses’ perspective, for most of us operate through the myopic view of the ego. Eventually, however, you will see that we can get to the larger perspective of the Self and it will be this that holds the meaning of love, for it is only our inner Khidr that understands it.

Love cannot be instilled by decree. What one person loves, another hates, but this has to do with preferences and opinions. Does unconditional love mean the same thing as unconditional affection?
I’ve always balked (choked is probably a better way of putting it) at the idea of unconditional love. It doesn’t work for me according to our current understanding of the word. There is no way I can hold affection for every person on the planet. There are some serious assholes out there. But I can appreciate them and I can know them, and therein lays the deepest meaning of the word ‘love.’

Of course, I make the assumption that we are all here to experience consciousness in physical form, and not as some stepping stone to a ‘better place.’ I also assume that there are no victims and that we draw precisely every interaction to our experience. There are No mistakes except what ego (Moses) tells us are mistakes. To Khidr there are no mistakes and what appear as errors eventually reveal themselves otherwise if we but trust all of our experience and understand what the experience is telling us. Oh, I almost forgot. Our entry into the world is also not an accident. It is by choice.

Love is knowing and appreciation. It is less about affection than it is about knowing that each one of us has chosen a complex reality to experience. Both sinner and saint have taken on quite an adventure where each is intricately intertwined with everyone else’s adventure. This is the knowing aspect of love. I know that even those that I dislike have chosen a similar adventure to my own and that underneath the apparent reality that we are all separate, we are also connected as a unified whole.
As spirit we are all responsive to the whole and this is where the appreciation comes in. I know that if you rear-end my car, I precisely drew that experience to me for my own reasons, and that you drew me to your experience for your reasons. I did not draw you to me so that I could blame you and call you an asshole. I learn nothing about me in doing that except how I respond to such incidents. If you feel you were a victim then you may have created that event to bring this to your attention. It says that in that moment you believed someone else created your reality.

Basically you are in cahoots with me and I am in cahoots with you in whatever we create. Now, I don’t have to like you or the experience, but if I am to follow the deepest meaning of love then I will appreciate your willingness to participate in my drama. More importantly, however, I will appreciate the journey that YOU have undertaken, knowing that who you are is also me and that all journeys are legitimate in their own right; neither right or wrong.
Now, the willingness to participate in everyone’s reality comes not from conscious thinking (Moses), it comes from a deeper level, our inner Khidr, if you will.

Khidr can be made conscious, but it takes an expanded awareness and an understanding that our reality is deeper and more complex than we had heretofore imagined. All of you have felt this from time to time. When I finally got this I took everyone off my hook, for I then knew that when conflict and trauma appeared in my life it was by invitation only and not by the mysterious magic wand of a God I could not understand. I was able to take God’s mysterious ways off my hook and love him/her anew for the wondrous gift of free choice. My affection has remained for people, places and things that align with my preferences. I have greater affection for some than I do for others, just as we all do. But now I can truly say that I love all that I perceive. I know you and I appreciate you.
Bill Marshall

GETTING OUT OF MY OWN WAY

2009-02-19T15:43:00.004-05:00

Because of time we live in an apparent reality of processes to which we have attached the belief of cause and effect. If there is an effect we believe there has to be a cause and visa versa. This is a really big belief, and much of the time it
serves us pretty well, unless, of course, you’re falling out of a tree. Processes are not the impediment to creating what we want, nor is cause and effect. The impediment lies in all the associations we attach to process and cause and effect. As you may recall from my last post, associations generate judgment and expectations. We hold expectations regarding how a process SHOULD unfold and how long it SHOULD take to unfold.

Let’s say I break my leg. It doesn’t matter how. I’ll bet you an economic recovery that most of us have certain expectations regarding what the process of healing should look like. These are all belief driven. We go to the hospital. They take x-rays. They find a fracture. They cast the leg. A few months later they take off the cast and tell us to go easy. This is an easy one, for we generally do not get in our own way. Everything goes according to expectations. We’re comfortable with the process…most of the time.
We TRUST, that by following doctor’s orders, the leg will heal. It may be inconvenient, but pretty much the leg healing is a done deal. If you want to heal your broken leg in one day then you will have to deal with all the beliefs involved in the process mentioned above. So let’s stay away, for now, from these on-the-spot creations because you can’t just think them into existence.

Why does the leg heal in the example given? Because we trust that it will based on the experience of others and ourselves that have established association in our body consciousness. We allow the process to unfold without our interference and the body responds to our beliefs. This is all completely without thought, for thought is not necessary. We trust in the process as long as the process unfolds according to expectations. But, let’s examine a trickier problem. Since the economy is in the crapper, let’s look at someone who has been laid off and is looking for a job. All of the beliefs attached to getting a new job can be tossed in the garbage if we trust (have no doubt) that we will get a new job.
To hold that trust, which is a deep knowing, we must LET GO of our expectations regarding how the process will unfold and when the process will be completed. Let’s say we have enough cash on hand to get us through two months of unemployment. The problem here is the beliefs that creep in as we approach the 7th week and still don’t have a job. Those beliefs begin to create doubt, which opposes the trust that you will get a job. Here is where you begin opposing yourself.

This is how we get in our own way. We start out with trust and follow the process of searching for a job. We submit 50 applications and have 10 interviews. We expect to get a job…….but, we have a time frame in which we expect it to appear. We have placed a condition on the want.
This is where we trip up. TIME. As we approach the 8th week we begin thinking, “Did I submit enough applications?” “Did I come off well in the interviews?” “Was there something I should have said, but didn’t?” “Am I too old?” “Am I too young?” Our minds will come up with numberless reasons why we have not been called as the deadline of eight weeks nears. At this point we have lost trust.

For those of us who have incorporated the Elias information we might begin the NIRAA (notice, identify, recognize, address, accept) exercise. This is a method and we are a race of folks that have been hypnotized into believing we need a method in order to accomplish. I was a part of this huge club and it is a club whose founding member is the belief in cause and effect. The instant we begin using a method we begin to corrode trust. Why? The instant we projected the want it was created. If it was already created and you fully trusted that it was then why employ a method? I’m not talking about process here. Process is what we did to heal our broken leg and process involves time. We are involved in processes constantly and rarely engage our thinking to create what we want. For instance, we turn our ignition key and the car starts. We eat food and it nourishes our body. We don’t go to thinking about beliefs and what am I doing right or what am I doing wrong. It’s automatic and without thought or method. We don’t get in the way of ourselves. We DO get in the way of ourselves when we don’t trust that what we want will manifest itself.

Quit checking in on the process. See yourself as already having the job. Let go of the want and grab hold of the have. Want projects lack and that will be the energy projected. Kimi, on the Elias forum I visit regularly, likened checking in to baking a soufflé. She said, “If you open the oven, the cake deflates. You leave it alone and it bakes. You can’t keep opening the oven every minute. You’ll ruin it and it will never get done. You have to be patient and that timer will let you know when it’s done.” Elias might change ‘patient’ to ‘allow’, but we all knew what Kimi meant.

WANT, TRUST, ALLOW, MANIFEST

WANT, TRY, CHECK IN, WANT, TRY, CHECK IN, WANT, TRY, CHECK IN……HAMSTER WHEEL.

Bill Marshall

ENERGY AND THE LEPRECHAUN

2009-02-12T13:06:00.008-05:00

(My profile and links still remain at the bottom of the page)

This post is a rewrite of segment of an Elias transcript. I've reworded and added many things to facilitate ease of understanding.

Usually when you create an experience that you do not like or that you do not want you ask the question, “Why did I create this?” You then ask, “was what I wanted what I actually wanted? Maybe I only thought I wanted it, for if I really wanted it I would have created it.”
This is how the “WHY” question turns on itself and confuses you. Before YCYOR you blamed fate or chance or someone else when you didn’t create what you wanted. But now that you are beginning to believe YCYOR you blame yourself for not creating what you want, or are unable to figure out why you created what you did. You say I am either doing something wrong or I don’t want what I thought I wanted. But most of the time you DO want what you think you wanted, and so when you do not create it you get confused. You begin to think that you do not know what you really want, or, you just don’t have the mechanics down for creating what you want.

This all involves energy. Even though thought does not create your reality, it does translate what you do create and thus it is important IN creating your reality. Remember, the translation is of the communication you are giving yourself through what you have created in the moment. Although thought can confuse you, most of the time it DOES accurately translate information you offer it. What you DO is also a factor in how you create. Your associations are also a factor. Associations are what you form or what you create in relation to an experience. You generate an experience and you create an assessment of the experience, which includes a judgment, good or bad. Once that association is formed, it generally remains with you. An association is the assessment that you generate in relation to an experience that includes a judgment.

The reason this is important to define and to understand is that you all generate many, many, many associations. You do not generate associations with future, for you have not experienced that yet. You do generate associations with past experiences and with present experiences. But past experiences and the associations attached to them affect what is created and are the most confusing in the present, for they confuse you with your present experiences, coloring them in relation to past experiences. For example, you associate money with acquiring and with work and earning. You typically do not associate money as falling out of the sky. You want money and your associations tell you that you must work for it. You want to work, but your associations with finding fulfilling work tells you that it is difficult and make take a lot of time.

Associations are many times, but not all, expressed in our feelings. The coupling of the feelings (associations) and the thought process you generate in conjunction with the feelings, along with ‘what you are doing’ are the factors that influence perception. AND it is perception that creates your reality.

Let’s liken energy to a leprechaun. Your leprechaun does NOT distinguish between good or bad. It merely grants your wish in whatever way you express (energy projection) it. This is the reality of free will. It doesn’t matter to the leprechaun whether what you are expressing is good or bad, comfortable or uncomfortable. And what you are expressing is not necessarily what you want. What you express is energy. For instance, if you generate an action, and the doing and the feelings, the associations, the thinking, the thought mechanism and all of them are aimed in the direction of “NOT ENOUGH” then it is the “NOT ENOUGH” that will be expressed, or in other words, created. If you want money and all of the above is directed to ‘I don’t have enough money,” then not having enough money is what will be created. Your leprechaun will give you exactly what you express. Yes, you want money, but you are expressing in energy a lack. It doesn’t matter to the leprechaun whether you like what he gives you or not. He will always give you what you express in energy. Energy manifestations are simple. What is difficult is recognizing and paying attention to the energy expressed. If you do not have enough money and want some, then what you are expressing in energy is a lack of money. “I want some money because I don’t have enough.”

You may be homeless and so your thought process, your associations, your doing are all concentrated in an energy of LACK, and so it is the lack that will continue to be expressed. You might go to your refrigerator and notice that you are low on juice. The association is that “I am low on juice. (lack)” . Thought then follows the association by saying I have to go to the store (an association). That moment is now gone and you have noticed nothing regarding your associations, your thought translator, or what you are expressing. You immediately head for the store. You were NOT aware of the energy you have expressed outwardly. The energy projected was LACK.

Maybe you put $10 of gas in your car and when you go to pay you notice you only have $9. The immediate association is that of lack…you are short a buck. You somehow come to an agreement with the attendant, but will not notice the energy expressed…lack… and you will offer it little thought other than to be embarrassed, which is another action of lack (your lack of having enough creates the embarrassment). You will discount yourself in that you created an embarrassing situation and that will compound the energy output of LACK. You will always draw the same energy that you project.

Your energy is as powerful as a nuclear explosion. But rather than blowing things away it acts as a magnet and attracts. It will pull to you any expression that matches what you are projecting.
This is the importance of energy. The outer world, your objective imagery is abstract and so one form of energy projection can draw thousands of different types of imagery (what we call ‘real world’ things) to you that are associated with that one type of energy. Think of the energy of lack and all the different ways you can you can experience it.

When you ask, “Why did I do this? Why did I create this?” the way you answer that question is to evaluate what you are doing; what you have been doing; what you have been physically doing and engaging, but also what you are doing inwardly, what associations are you generating? So, let’s say you are concentrating on not having enough money and you want to counter this projection of lack, and you start doing affirmations like, “I will generate abundance. I am worthy of money. I want to create wealth.” You do this day after day and still find that you have not created any difference in your reality. You get frustrated and think that maybe you didn’t do the affirmations long enough or often enough. So you do more affirmations and still there is no change in your reality. WHY?

You are doing affirmations, but what are the affirmations ASSOCIATED with? Are they present? No, because your associations are linked to the past, but you bring them to the present. Do you feel your affirmations? Do you KNOW that within yourself? Do you truly know that you are worthy? Do you truly know that you create abundance. No, you do not. You are concentrating on not having enough milk, not having enough time, not having enough energy, not having enough in your relationship; you do not have enough control, etc. But you are not paying attention to this energy expression of lack. You concentrate on your affirmations and continue to notice that you are not creating what you want. You do not create abundance because your energy does not project abundance. It is not moving in the direction of abundance. The leprechaun says, “OK, you want ‘not enough’, I will give you ‘not enough’.

When you DO create what you want, you are often surprised and the ‘why’ question pops up again. Why did I accomplish this, but couldn’t accomplish that? You accomplished because you did not question. You trusted. Trust is a lack of doubt. When there is no doubt you create with ease. The reason it is easier to create what you want than it is to create what you do not want is because creating what you do not want requires opposition. The energy projection is that of TRYING. Trying does not accomplish. Trying attempts. How is the energy of DOING different? Doing projects an energy that says you ARE accomplishing, and not that you WILL accomplish. As Yoda in Star Wars said, “Not try. DO.”

Energy is expressed through processes and processes require time. And since energy works through process it is important to pay attention to the now. Why? Because only in the NOW can you create what you want in the next NOW. Each action that you create in the NOW within a process is an action that is already creating what you want. Each action you generate creates branches, mostly unforeseen, that spring from your newly growing tree. You are generally unaware of how those branches form, but if you are paying attention to the process of their formation you can manipulate their form. When you ANTICIPATE their form you are using associations and employing expectations. When you really know your direction and the form the branches will take you will not question it. Associations form expectations and expectations destroy trust when the form goes against expectations. Expect what you want to appear, but let go of expectation on how and when it should appear. This kills trust.

Importance is another factor. You pay attention to what is important to you regardless of what it is. Whether you like it or dislike it you will pay attention to it if it is important to you. We often pay more attention to what we dislike. The more energy you offer in a particular direction the more you create that. So if you are offering lack, you will create lack. For example, you create a headache, which you dislike. You give this importance. It is important because you wish the headache to go away. The more the headache continues the more important it becomes, and so you concentrate on the importance even more.

You can alter the direction your energy is taking by paying attention and aligning what you are feeling, your associations, which generate expectations, what you are thinking, your translation and what you are doing in conjunction with your intention. Instead of visualizing what you want, visualize that you already have it. Engage what you KNOW you already have. If you want a bicycle visualize yourself actually touching that bicycle, riding it in an area that you enjoy. FEEL yourself on the bicycle. KNOW that it is yours already. Even if it does not materialize in that moment (a function of expectations), KNOW that you already possess it. It is NOT to be acquired. It is already possessed. Pay attention to your process, what you are actually doing. . This is significant, for regardless of whether what you are doing seems to be associated with a bicycle or not, all that you do is interconnected. If you are making a sandwich and find yourself frustrated because you don’t have enough roast beef to satisfy you then that IS associated with the bicycle. The imagery may be entirely different, but that ENERGY is expressing an energy to prevent you from materializing that bicycle.

Notice the energy expressed in the moment you feel you don’t have enough roast beef and ALTER it. “This IS enough. This IS satisfactory,” and then ALLOW yourself to enjoy it. If you allow the associations and expectations of what a good roast beef sandwich should be and incorporate lack then this energy shockwave will create an obstacle to acquiring your bicycle. If you allow yourself to relax and appreciate what you HAVE generated regarding the sandwich the energy shockwave changes and it WILL positively influence your creation of your bicycle in your process. PAY ATTENTION TO THE ENERGY YOU PROJECT.
Bill Marshall

Meet My Associate...Mr. Expectations

2008-12-10T09:35:00.002-05:00

(My profile and links remain in never never land at the bottom of the page)

Associations are a big deal if we are to create what we want. Associations are links to past experience that reside in memory and are cherry-picked unconsciously every time we experience something that we have experienced before. They are highly influential in their effect on what it is we create, and they are loaded with judgment. The difficulty most of us have with being present, or being in the now, is that our associations foster very strong expectations. It is helpful to recognize our associations whether we create what we want or create what we don’t want. Why? Because if we know what is influencing what it is we do create we can neutralize it if we so choose and therefore minimize expectations. We will generally choose not to neutralize an association if it influences the creation of something pleasurable. For most of us our associations with a cake that sits on the table before us are generally favorable, especially if we are not overweight. We drag up through memory positive imagery of the taste and the texture of the cake, which sets up expectations based on past experience. But let’s say you are overweight. Your associations may be both good and bad; good regarding taste and bad regarding the effect those calories have on your weight.

Every moment is a new creation and in each moment we can choose a different influencing belief that drives our perception. For thousands of years we have not done that because we have not understood that we create all of our reality. That caloric intake affects weight is a strongly held belief that is made even stronger by our associations. Associations are like steroids for beliefs. The belief is true and not true at the same time. It is true in that you experience it as true because of your associations, but you can also experience it as not true by neutralizing the belief. How do you do that? You recognize it as a belief and accept it without judgment. You notice the associations that reside in memory and understand that each moment is a new creation. It is our associations that link one moment to the next and it is our associations that highly influence our deep seeded belief in cause and effect. Eat too much cake and you will grow fat. We know that because of our associations with eating cake. But this is not universally true since many folks can eat a lot of cake and not grow fat.

We generate expectations based on associations. Let’s say that whenever you and your spouse discuss your child’s acting-out behavior you get into a fight. You have different views on how to deal with it and so after the first discussion that ended in a fight associations are established. Again, the associations reside in memory and carry judgment. Your judgment is that you are right and your spouse is wrong and your spouse’s judgment is that you are wrong and he is right. The association is this: discussing your child’s acting out behavior is an unpleasant activity. The expectation is that such a discussion will result in a fight. So, even though each moment is new, it is highly influenced by associations and expectations and so it will very much follow a similar course as the previous discussions. Why? Because we are unaware of the power of associations and our expectations.

However, if you become aware of what influences your energy and the present moment before going into such a discussion you can create a different outcome. The present will no longer need to mimic the past for you understand that it is a new creation and that the associations attached to your discussions need not pertain to the present moment. This will either diminish or eliminate the expectations you brought with you from the past. But, if you believe strongly that the past determines the present then you will have a difficult time not repeating the past. There are 2 types of expectations. 1) I expect my want to manifest itself and 2) I expect it to manifest at a certain time and in a certain way. The first is a function of trust - that is, my goal will be met. The second places conditions on how the process of acquiring the want should look. This second expectation will kill the first if the process of acquiring the want does not meet expectations. So yes, expect the want to be fulfilled and then let go of expectations of how the process of getting the want should unfold. The expectations of an unfolding process are generated by our associations.

It’s all about awareness of what it is you believe, what associations you carry in memory and the expectations those associations bring forward. So give this a try and enjoy your cake.

Bill Marshall

Election Symbolism

2008-11-11T10:24:00.003-05:00

(my profile and post links have somehow moved to the bottom of the page?)

As you may now realize, I consider the outer world of things and experience to be abstract, while the inner world of emotion is literal. Briefly, by way of example, the emotion of anger can be represented by limitless experiences. You can slap me, call me a nasty name, or cut me off with your car and yet the anger remains the same except in degree. So, with this in mind what might the election of Barack Obama symbolize? It may symbolize different things to different people, for we create these mass events jointly, but for our individual reasons.

First, a little about what drove me to cast my vote for Obama. Although I agreed with many of his policies, this is not what ultimately drove my decision. I first saw Obama at the 2004 Democratic National Convention when he delivered the keynote address. At that moment I knew he would eventually become President of the United States and a great joy accompanied that knowing. In my book, The Forgotten Self, published in 2005, I wrote Obama into the story as President, but ultimately changed his name to a fictional name on the advice of my publisher. I knew he would be President not because of his vast experience, of which he had little at the time, but because of an energy and a wisdom that I had yet to see in others that had run before him. For me this was as legitimate a reason to vote for him as were his policies. I refused to engage in arguments supporting my choice, nor did I engage in dispersions on those that voted for McCain. There are no wrong individual choices and I understand that my truths need not be shared by others.

OK, back to the symbolism of Obama and the election. For much of our history we have called an individual black if they had any genetic linkage to what used to be called the Negro race. This continues even today despite the fact that many African-Americans have varying degrees of Caucasian genetic linkage. There was no doubt that Obama was 50% black and 50% white as his father was a Kenyan. This was as clear a linkage back to Africa as there could be. There being no accidents or coincidences this Kenyan/American joining had to have meaning and purpose. For the blacks in this country that was a clear linkage – whether they thought about it or not – to their heritage, their beginnings in this country. It is no surprise, nor should it be, that our black brothers and sisters voted 94% for Obama. It was a vote of deep emotional feeling, as legitimate a reason for casting a vote as the most rational of reasons. The symbolism of his mixed race is that of inclusion and the acceptance of differences.

It is also meaningful that much of Obama’s early life exposed him to many diverse cultures. It exposed him to differences and how those differences were always trumped by their basic humanity. That is to say that the differences were superficial when compared to the human struggle we all contend with on a daily basis. It grew in him a compassionate heart and a wisdom that those who had not had that exposure were less likely to develop. It created in him a global compassion rather than a tribal compassion that was expressed in his acceptance speech. He understood that as humans we are separated by artificial geographic and geopolitical boundaries. His life, therefore, is symbolic of inclusion, not exclusion, which I understood from his 2005 address when he said, “There are no red states or blue states. There is only the United States.”

I have lived through fifteen elections and I have never seen the emotions that surfaced during this election. I have never seen the youth of this country so energized by a candidate. I have never seen the emotion that I witnessed on the faces of Obama’s supporters; black, white, Hispanic, Asian and Native American. That kind of emotion is not generated by the intellect, but by a deeper source. It is a source that has long been buried by the male dominated intellect. We are now moving into a more balanced energy, where the feminine intuition is gaining strength. Symbolically this represents the rise of the feminine, not the feminine gender, but the feminine energy as represented in the yin/yang symbol of the Tao.

Fear still remained a part of this election as witnessed by the 62% the economy received as the primary concern of the electorate. The war in Iraq and terrorism both received 9%. There is a different dynamic in economic concerns than in our fear of terrorism. Both, however, throw our concerns into the future, which has not occurred in our experience. Symbolically our economy was attacked by Wall Street terrorists, folks that see no connection between their greed and those that suffer from that greed. As long as we believe that we are all separate and that our individual actions do not ripple out and affect everything we will spawn all form of terrorists. But terrorists are our own individual creations, there to remind us of our individual fears, and lack of trust in a beneficent universe.

I see Obama as a reflection of myself, a natural idealist who believes in the good intent of humans as part of our inherent nature. We are not born sinners, nor are we cosmic accidents of a mindless mechanistic universe. We have purpose and value and part of our individual purpose is to ensure that in the pursuit of our own value we add to and enrich the value of all others. So, I did not vote for Obama because of what he could do for me. That would negate my belief that I create all of my reality. I voted for him as a symbol, a symbol of overcoming the odds, a symbol of acceptance, a symbol of inclusion and a symbol that underneath our apparent differences we are all one and of good intent.

Your symbolism for what took place in this historic election may be antithetical to mine, or they may be similar. But, I would end by reminding you that what you hold as truth is true for you alone, even though others may share some of your truths. In this sense your truths are true and not true at the same time. Your truths are not bad. They are your guidelines. They steer you through the course you have chosen to traverse in this life. It is only when we judge our truths as good and other’s truths as bad that our lives begin to fill with conflict. When we try to convince others of the rightness of our truth we have already moved into a defense of self that has never needed defending.
Bill Marshall