You know... I have been thinking about our conversationabout the possible state of Ben's health. I told you how his expression of appreciation of my visiting him at the corralseems sincere, but a little out of the ordinary.

I had another friend who lived in Clinton for a good while. His name was Noel Carter. He was from Kentucky too. He was a drunk too. For about ten years I used to go over to his machine shop to visit and drink a little with him. When he
reached a certain state of inebriation he would get very adventurous intellectually. This seemed very similar to how
booze can help a person break through their social inhibitions and flirt with the girls and get out on the dance floor and cut a rug. Except with Noel it seem to give him the ability to cut through the inhibitions that stoppedhim from displaying his intellectual reach.

Noel had incredible intellectual powers. Of course, he had to have a few drinks before he would let anyone see that. He had been in the Air Force and his job there was the repair and upkeep of C-140 aircraft. It didn't take him long to
become the crew chief on a specific airplane, and his knowledge of these airplanes was phenomenal. I have sit with
him for hours and listened to his descriptions of the various systems involved in the operation of this aircraft.

In the same way, he described how various types of jet engines worked, and what needed to be there for them to work properly. While this topic is not as interesting to me as many others, his unique "country boy" was of using a great number of fascinating metaphors and analogies to get me to visualize what he was describing. These metaphors came straight from his childhood in Kentucky, and over the years and the bottles of Black Jack we consumed together I felt as though I could wander through Kentucky almost as a native
son.

The people from this section of the country have a unique way of expressing themselves. It took me a while to absorb and understand the small but distinct ways of using common phrases that sometime meant the very opposite of what might normally be taken by their usage.

Noel died when he was 52 years old. In the last two years before he died I didn't see him as often as I had in the
past. I had started working a mechanical engineering job over at Fort Bragg, and between the commute and the time I
had to spend on the job I only got to see him on weekends occasionally. I could see that things had changed with him,
and he was taking even less care of his health. He entered a kind of lethargy that left him disinterested in many of the
things he had formerly taken an interest in. He didn't take in work to make money with any real effort any more, and he had taken to eating mostly beans that he cooked on his wood stove and occasionally eating wieners. I started buying some food like beef stew and taking it over to him to try to encourage him to eat.

He was always a small, skinny man. He had very small, delicate bones. He got even skinnier, even though I didn't
think that was possible, and yet he developed a little bloaty looking pooch to his stomach. One of the last times I went over to his shop to visit, he had a large cyst that appeared on his face, and he had stopped bathing and changing clothes. He looked awful, but when I drove up to the door of his shop where he was working on a lawn mower he
looked up and offered his old grin to welcome me.

One day I was sitting at the counter of the restaurant where we had met. He had quit coming there, so I was a little
surprised when he walked up behind me and tapped me on the opposite shoulder and laughed a little when I looked the wrong way. Then, he got very serious and asked me if I would do him a favor. I told him I would, and asked him what the favor was. He wanted to know if I would take him to the VA hospital at Fayetteville. I said that of course I would, and asked him what was wrong. His eyes got a little teary whenhe told me something was terribly wrong in his belly. I expressed my sorrow at his discomfort, and asked him when he wanted me to take him to Fayetteville. I think this was on a Friday. He told me that he needed to go on Monday. I agreedto take him anytime he felt the need.

On Sunday afternoon I stopped by his shop to coordinate our getting together to make the trip. The door to his shop was open as usual, but when I went inside to talk to him he wasn't there. Instead, there was another skinny fellow who told me that he was Noel's cousin, and that Noel's mother had come down from Kentucky to take him home. Apparently he had called her since I had seen him, and she recognized he was in trouble and had come to get him.

His cousin told me that Noel was over at the motel room his mother had rented, and told me that Noel may like it if I
went over to visit him before he left. I didn't do that. I knew Noel would not like for me to see him in that condition. I never saw him again. Turned out he had developed colon cancer and had waited too long for them to do anything but
cut it all out and send him home to die.

As I thought it over I realized that Noel had told me in his own way that he knew something was wrong and said goodbye to me. I sort of got that same feeling from Ben the last time I saw him. These ol' boys from Kentucky have their own way.

Quite often I find myself somewhat amazed at how people take that which they have been trained to think they're like as the gospel truth. I wrote my opinion on why I think the Jewish tribes have suffered persecution throughout their existence on a discussion group I subscribe to, and got a response from a woman to claims to be Jewish stating that I was descriminatory for even having an opinion of their history. I suppose if I had offered an opinion about why the native American Indians lost their land and territories the Indians in the group would have written that my assessment of why they suffered that loss would have written in to say that I descriminated against them. Some people... eh?

The real problem with these types of things has to do with the world getting smaller and the tribal unity of all peoples who attempt to segregate themselves from the rest of the world are losing their hold on their children who had rather join the world community than kowtow to their ancient customs. Purists always lose their battles to keep things pure. I doubt very seriously if there ever has been a pure race. In fact, it simply doesn't work out because even if the purists got their way the bloodlines would dissipate because of inbreeding and they would end up a bunch of idiots who could not even defend themselves against attack.

A friend mentioned in an e-mail that there was going to be a TV program on the true nature of the relationship between Jesus of Nazareth and Mary Magdalene as represented in the art of Leonardo Da Vinci. I decided to watch it in order to knowingly participate in the discussion that might follow. I was only vaguely aware of the Da Vinci information. I didn't know that he was supposed to be part of a secret society that were given secret information about what happened to Mary after Jesus's death. I wasn't too impressed with this part of the program.

What I did find interesting was the fact that so many scholars considered Mary Magdalene the Grail vessel herself. That her relationship with him was due to the fact that she was considered the vessel that received Jesus's blood. By blood, they were talking about bloodline, and that Mary Magdalene was the mother of his children. The program used Da Vinci's painting of the last supper as support for their theory. In the painting, which supposedly contained representative information of the secrets that Da Vinci was given by the secret cabal, the program promulgated the notion that the person sitting to the right of Jesus was not the disciple John, but was indeed a woman who was Mary Magdalene. I found myself agreeing that the image to the right of Jesus in the painting sure looked more like a woman than a man. Particularyly when the other images in the painting that were supposed to be men did look like men except for this one figure. An interview with a so-called Da Vinci art expert pointed out how the figure purported to be Mary Magdalene was leaning to the right in the painting, and that her leaning to the right and Jesus's image turned to the left formed a V(Vee) which an ancient symbol for the human female. It also represents a container or vessel, and when put together seems to infer that the Holy Grail was Mary herself, instead of being a drinking cup.

The entire time I was watching this program I was remembering a documentary about the Popel in which it was stated that John Paul did not pray to either God or Jesus, but to Mary as Jesus's mother. This suggest to me that the highly touted virgin birth did not concern itself with the birth of the physical Jesus, but of the docetic spirit that was born unto the personality Jesus, and may represent the continued worship of the old female Goddesses, which was being suppressed in the Jewish tribes at the time Jesus was around.

This female Goddess adoration is much older than the Jewish concept of Jehovah, and was predominant throughout the Mid-East and the Greek states well before the Judaic tribes were formed. This seems to substaniate to some degree that Christianity did not spring from the Jews and the Mosaic Law traditions, but from the old Greek oral tradition of a female God.

In my dreams I have a seemingly female companion. She is always there as a witness. I haven't been able to look at her directly, as yet, and identify her. I thought for a long time that she was my second wife because she has dark hair. I taught my ex-wife how to astral travel and we did a lot of work together in that regard. But, now I'm not so sure. Yesterday morning as I was waking up I found myself calling her Linda. I don't know whether or not that was a fluke, and it may end up being a distraction. It is, however, the first time I am conscious of that I have had any clue as to her identity. Maybe she is my anima, but I find that a little confusing because there is another woman in my dream life that is a fair-haired beauty that shows up now and then.

I have been involved recently in a drawn out discussion about description, and the various languages and lingos humans use to say what they perceive. My most recent conclusion, that the various descriptive efforts we make to communicate the ineffable fall short of actually getting the satisfaction we require from such efforts, is truly an exercise in futility. Yet, I continue to make such efforts despite myself. I wonder how surprised I'll be if it ever happens?

This is just ridiculous. I just wrote out this long piece about my feelings in regard to how Christianity has played a role in my life, and as I went to post it the whole damn thing went away. I wasn't as pissed as I thought I'd be. It only took a moment before I realized I wasn't supposed to put that entry online.

I did seem to learn something from what I wrote. I learned what I'm willing to believe and what I'm not willing to believe. A lot has happened to my philosopy since I learned that the origin of Christianity was not from Judaic sources, but from the classic Greek era. Another aspect of this learning was that I found I was able to accept a docetic Christ, whereas the idea of worshipping a man as God just doesn't work for me.

I look in the mirror each day now to see if I look a little slimmer. I know I am slimmer because my old pants now fit pretty comfortably when I put them on. I've still got bulges that do not please me, but I know this new way of eating I've adopted is working for me. It's pretty easy on me too, because I eat as much as I want to without going hungry. Back in my twenties and thirties I used to go on frequent fasts that lasted anywhere from three days to thirty days. Doing this had a tendency to make me feel as if I were making a great spiritual effort to do what was necessary to access a state of physical and mental ecstasy. This happened quite frequently in those days, but doesn't seem all that important to me now.

I have a voice I hear occasionally that only seems to come when I need to stop doing something and won't take steps to bring things to a halt. This voice has spoken to me at important times in my life. Usually it speaks one sentence and then I don't hear it again for a long time. A few months ago it told me that I had graduated from the need to make the efforts to bring ecstasy into my life. I suspect my lifelong seeking is about over. I made full circle since my first doubts about my religious beliefs came into play at around the time I moved into puberty. This seeking dominated me for a very long time. I didn't or couldn't accept that it would ever end. Presently, I think it has.

I sat with some friends who visited me the other day and found myself explaining my thirty year addiction to using the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the Book of Changes. They politely indulged me as I went through the various reasons I thought I had done this. It wasn't until last night as I lay dreaming that I thought about what I had told them.

What impressed me about this was that I had questioned many of the decisions and actions I initiated in my life for a very long time. Presently, I have no idea why I did this thing.

I was aware during this period of how simply using this oracle was detrimental to me. But, even more detrimental was the effect this habit had on those around me. It was as if I needed the permission of this very esoteric book to love them or believe a single word they said to me. I questioned the motivations of my friends as if they were possibly my enemies. Mostly, however, I questioned my own self as if I might be my own worst enemy. More often than I liked, it turned out that I was.

One of the most ridiculous questions I ask of the I Ching was the time when I had a bicycle accident and landed head first in the side of a mountain in Kentucky going thirty miles an hour and was literally seeing stars. My wife of that time who was riding her own bike came to where I lay and wanted to call an ambulance to take me to the hospital. I knew I was hurt, but the first thing I wanted to do was ask the oracle if I needed to go to the emergency room. As if the blood and the stars I was seeing was not enough evidence to show us it was a very good idea.

I worked as an industrial pipefitter and welder during much of this time. That's how I got the money for us to live on. Whether or not I took a particular job depended on the response I got from the oracle. No matter how broke we were or even if we had no food to eat. This habit took us to ridiculous places that no husband and father of any compassion and responsibility would allow. Finally, I surmise, my use of the Book of Changes was directly responsible for the breakup of our marriage and the loss of the presence of my own children from that marriage. I haven't seen them for over twenty years. It's my own fault. Why would it not be?

Then, one night about two years ago, a deep voice told me, "Stop using the I Ching." I woke up knowing that this was what I was supposed to do, and after a few weeks of not wanting to believe that I should stop, I did. After thirty years, it was over.

What I told my friends the other night finally came home to roost with me. The thing about what I told them was that I had questioned myself so deeply for so long a period of time. I don't know if the doing of this is a blessing or a curse. One thing I do know is that I can't go back and change my life. I can review it and reframe it to a more palatable memory, but I can't change the effect it had on those who were near and dear to me. Their memories, whatever those memores are, will stay the same. Since we haven't communicated very much at all since I drove them out of my life, and probably never have the opportunity before the event of my death, it probably doesn't matter one way or the other that I did what I did or that they think of me as they do. Whatever that is.

Sitting around waiting to die seems perfectly absurd when I'm perfectly healthy. The people in my natal family seem to live long lives. If I sit and wait for the occasion of my death for as long as it took my father to die, I will have to wait for another twenty three years. My mother is still alive. I expect to die with callouses on my ass.

I was pretty impressed by the PBS show Nova last night. They had a program on string theory. I have read a little on this, but nothing definitive. I was much more pleased with having the video content giving animated examples of what they were talking about.

I love getting sarcastic about SCIENCE. I attempt to keep up with what's new. Especially about the digital world. It took me a long time to realize that mathematics is just another description language, and that physicists are just as prone to tell tall tales as people who use words to offer descriptions. I'm even more convinced after seeing the string theory show that "scientists" create the "discoveries" they come up with. P.T.Barnum was right. There is a fool born every minute of the day.

Of course, when I have food in my belly and a place to get out of the weather to sleep, what else is there to do but create stuff to amuse oneself.

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I had a long talk yesterday with an old friend. We had a little tiff a while back and had not talked for a long time. We seem to stimulate each other to deeper insights about the things we talk about.

One of the subjects we got into was considering our total life experience as one huge data field, and that this data field surrounds us much like some holographic electron cloud in what all our experiences can appear in holgraphic form in which it can be accessed by our mental software. The analogy we used was that it existed as something similar to data mining software like large corporations use to go through their corporate data bases to find trends they can take advantage of to better their products and service, and to find more productive ways of marketing.

There is another element besides the data field and the mining software, and that's the operator that first accumulated the data in the data field, and who decides what can be done with the efficiency of the software they have available to them.

Both of us appeared to agree that we have enough data in the data field that no real effort is necessary to get more data in there. Data gathering, at this stage of the game is something that happens as a result of habits that have been put in place a long time ago. We even talked about whether or not other data fields that come from former existences could not be mined.

The real work probably needs to be done in the area of the data mining software, and how the operator chooses what topics that software should mine for to get the desired results the operator decides will get him the most useful information.

My friend had an unusual experience Friday a week ago that seems to have changed the way he looks at life. This experience was brought about in the presence of another friend who provided the means for this experience to come about. I had been told about this event previously, but my experience with this fellow I talked with had not lead me to think that such a change was possible, but after our long conversation yeasterday I am convinced the desired changes actually did take place. Maybe not as fully as they could, but strong changes did occur and can be further implimented by the same such experiences in the future. I could not be more delighted for him.

One of the more difficult sentences for me to say sometime is, "I don't know". Formulating an opinion about just about any subject or topic that comes to my doorway seems awfully easy for me to do. Like many people I enjoy being the center of attention at times. Other times I just wanna melt into the woodworks and disappear without having to commit myself to taking a position on wot seems controversial at best, and at the very least a question of political expediency. Getting old seems to have provided me with opportunities in both directions.

I have been blessed with a good memory for some subjects. I think it has to do with pattern recognition more than anything else. I don't remember things verbatim. Just the pattern the information takes. I can remember what people write in discussion groups, and if they cater a different perspective, say for the sake of political expediency, I remember what they have committed to previously and point that out. Sometime I remember vague references for years.

I used to take great pride in pointing out the other's inconsistencies, and it was a source of pleasure to me to point their inconsistencies out coupled with a little sarcasm to twist the knife. This little pleasure can be costly though, and in the past, I appear to have alienated the good will of people I truly admired.

I got fascinated by the system of thinking inherent in the Chinese classic The Book of Changes (I Ching) for a long time. It is also considered a book of wisdom. There are many quotable metaphors used in the Emperor's Yellow Book version translated by Richard Wilhelm, and it is not unusual for me to offer up my favorite quotes from that source.

The use of my memores to play games with other people's inconsistencies keeps bringing one particular quote to mind in this regard, "The superior man lets many things pass without being duped."

Since the stated aim of the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the Book of Changes is to learn to live a life which does not incur blame, it teaches caution as the main attribute of living a life of no blame.

The necessary caution in regard to my sarcastic use of memory probably means that I should allow my noticing the other's inconsistencies to remain unspoken and unwritten without being duped into a response at all. I guess this has to do with the Book of Changes reputation for teaching statescraft.

It seems like when it rains it pours. I was moving my indoor TV antenna around last night to try to get better reception on the three channels I recieve. The cable that lead to my computer monitor, which has a TV tuner in it, was all tangled up with all the other cables for my computer, and it seemed like the best thing to do was to unplug the cable from the monitor and pull it free of the tangle mass of other cables. I noticed when I unhooked it from the monitor that the connectors were not tight. So, when I unraveled it and reconnected I made sure I tightened up the connector nut. When I did that I started receiving many more stations including the UHF stations I didn't receive previously. Now I can get 10-12 stations fairly clear. This hadn't happened in over a year.

The biggest thrill in this happening was that this gave me a lot more variety than I had previously. I found a really clear public educational channel, while mostly boring, do have some documentaries I enjoy. Mostly, however, I found that I receive a Spanish language station. Many Latinos now live in North Carolina, and I found to my delight that one of the UHF channels had converted to Spanish.

Without understanding very much at all, I watched that station the rest of the night. For the first time in my life I can sit in my home and watch the facial expressions and hear the rhythms of people speaking Spanish. This development could give me incentive to study Spanish with a little more vigor now.

I have never really wanted to study Spanish academically. I just wanted to understand what people are saying and perhaps learn to speak interactively with Spanish speakers. The academic aspects of learning this language doesn't really appeal to me.

I have traveled considerably in Mexico without possessing enough Spanish to ask directions about how to get where I wanted to go. I have always had to depend on someone else to interpret for me. This dependency has been uncomfortable to say the least, and it has nearly gotten me put in a Mexican prison for activities I didn't even participate in, because I didn't know what was going on.

Now, with the chance to see and hear Spanish being used in the programs that I receive on the TV, I think I will be able to pick up more and more expressions that might help me to do what I need to do to get proficient in this language.

In the past, as I thought about the small amount of money I get from Social Security, I had thought I might move to one of the countries south of here so that my money would go further. But, when I retired and started getting my checks, my lack of Spanish has made me think about the feasibility of making this happen. I felt sure that if I picked up and went to live in Mexico that I would eventually pick the language up just by being surrounded by it, and by the necessity of having to use it to communicate with Spanish speakers. But, I didn't do that. The chance of my ignorance being taken advantage of by unsavory characters caused hesitation. Now, maybe all this will change.

I'm enjoying the Fall weather. Like Spring, it surprises me each year.

I have seen a lot of stuff written about love. I find it really astounding that strangers on the e-mail circuit profess to love people they have never seen in their life. It seems obvious that we are not possessed by the same definition of what love is. I wrote a paragraph that defines my present attitude toward love.

"Love is not a possession that I can dispense or receive as it were a commodity to be bought or sold by works. It is not something I earn or attempt to make others earn or feel by words or actions of preference. Love is not to be found in ex-is-tense, but in abandonment to the is-ness that awaits beyond passion."

I guess I'm attempting to state that love exists beyond humanity's effort to make it into what they want or need it to be. That it lies beyond desire. What I have experienced as love seems to be that way. Love seems to be a state of being I enter when the conditions are congruent. Of course, this is just my personal opinion. Maybe love is a little like pain. We gnow it when it's there for us, and when we attempt to remember it or conjure it forth to comfort us it doesn't come or go at our bidding. I don't write that with any assurance that I'm wright or wrong about this, it's just what I sense is the way it works with me. I am certainly not prepared to argue with people about what love is.

I do think love emerges when we occupy the specious present. Looking for love, in all the wrong places or no, it appears to show up in my life at random. Love doesn't seem to be something that can be cast aside. Maybe it can be ignored, but at a cost I'm not really willing to pay.

I have married two different women. I write that they were different, but I don't appear to be all that sure about it. Sometime I think that both women became what I needed them to be when we were together. After we separated I experiences many moments of negativity. These moments had a tendency to wonder if I really loved them in spite of the fact that I had declared many times that I didn't know what love is.

I regretted our breaking up in both cases, and in both cases I assume it was me that was at fault. Like when I left my natal family and went off to join the Navy to get away from their control of my activities, I didn't seem to be able to live like I wanted to live because of a sense of duty to them. My sense of duty was carefully constructed from childhood. Marriage was promulgated as a condition that required me to act toward our marriage as if it were a duty, but duty or not I did not feel bound to marriage as something sacred that would be a sin for me to walk away from. To me, duty is just another conceptual construct that is intended as a guide rather than a necessity.

Both of the women that I married were intelligent and both were more educated than I was. They both made more money in their professions than I did. They didn't seem concerned with this, and I was only concerned when other people made it a point to bring it up. In reflection, I sense that they needed me to have less to contribute than they did. Both were perfectly capable of raising our children alone. I have often wondered if this wasn't part of the tacit agreement we shared even before we got married.

Like living with my parents as a kid, I had my own way of doing things. I had my own interests. I don't seem all that sure that I chose my interests, or even that my interests were chosen for me.

It didn't make much difference about leaving my first marriage, or forcing my second wife to leave me. My entire marriage life to both women seemed arranged by a force outside of myself even as it appeared as though we both made the decision. They were and still are very strong women. They seem more masculine than many of the women I have known. They were both born under masculine astrological signs, whereas I was born under a feminine sign. They were both aggressive and I more passive. Both of them approached me for relationship and it only appeared in some ways that I was taking the lead in our relationship.

I don't gnow that I really abandoned my children. On sheer physical evidence alone it might seem that way, but from my perspective after having suffered much because in their absence, it's almost as if it were destined to be that way from the beginning or even prior to our marriage. I think I was meant to be alone, and they were supposed to learn to deal with life without the daily influence of a father. I am alone and they were raised for the most part without the interference of my input. I haven't seen any of them for a long time, and the children of my second marriage since they were taken by their mother some twenty odd years ago. I was told by my youngest brother that I have a grandson by my youngest daughter. I don't expect to ever see him. He's better off that way. I don't and it appears that I never will play by society's rules in this regard. I don't think that the way I conduct my affairs is a particularly good way for most people to live, and yet, it is exactly what I'm supposed to do to get what I want out of life.

I am perfectly aware that I have neglected writing an entry lately. To those who have reminded me of it, you have not really been ignored. I seem to be going through some sort of major change in the last six months or so.

For one thing I seem to have lost interest in some of the activities I have indulged in the past. I think one of the reasons this change is coming about simply has to do with my lack of contact with real people. I don't have the feedback I got in the past that seems necessary to keep certain interests going.

A couple of days ago I unsubbed from the Gospel of Thomas discussion list I participated in for 1-2 years. It just got to be boring. I subbed there in the first place because it seemed like a indirect way to deal with my early religious instruction.

Religion had been such an explosive topic for me since the onset of puberty, and I felt like it was time to deal with my anger about it. Being on that list really opened my eyes to a lot of what troubled me in my Southern Baptist upbringing. I "gnew" that I was being lied to. I sensed something was terribly amiss about what I was being told and forced to learn.

I learned a lot from the other members of the list. In the end, it was the total lack of moderator responsibility that caused me to let it go.

This suprised me a little. Freedom of Speech has allowed me to explore my interest in all sorts of areas. I never thought I would want to be on a moderated list, but the Gospel of Thomas list was not so much about freedom of speech as it was total anarchy. Some of the list members seemed more interested in the historical aspect of the early christians, and wrote volumes of weird, hoky stuff that had nothing to do with what the Gnostic Gospels were about.

The message was totally ignored in favor of the need of some of the members need to feel important about their own idea of scholarship. They are not scholars, but good old country boys who missed their calling.

One old guy who considered himself to be a true Catholic went on and on about church dogma that was the most translucent crap I had ever read. Then, there was his ex-girlfriend who was one of the most crude frenetic bitches I personally encountered in the various discussion groups I have subbed to. The moderators did kick her off the list a few times, but she would just change e-mail addresses and continue as if nothing happened. The dialogue just went away after the moderators got so lazy they let her stay on under one name or the other. All she was there for was to beg her old boyfriend to come back to her, and her remarks made it blatantly obvious why he never will. No blame.

Now I'm subbed to another group I have grown to enjoy writing with. I'm very impressed with the woman who moderates the list. She has a way with words that really hits the spot with me, and she keeps the fundamentalist fringe element at bay with what would appear to exist as very little effort. Truth is, the list members really don't know how much trouble she has to go to. It just doesn't. No telling what she has to go through off list.

She has a health problem that has caused her some problems lately and she was in the hospital for a while. Now she seems to be back in form somewhat and I'm really glad for her and for her admirers. I'm certainly one of those.

Our little town now has a Lowe's store that just opened. Gives us a little more choice about where we can shop. I have spent a couple of hours just browsing around since it opened to see what they've got to sell. It's really convenient to my house and will be easy to get things home if and when I buy them. I guess I don't have any good excuse not to do a little work on my rathole some call a house now, except for not having much money to spend on it. It doesn't matter. No one sees it but the people who love me and have decided to forgive me for being whatever it is that I am.

I've been trying to write an entry about how I adopted the personality I hide behind for some time now. It's not as easy as stream of consciousness writing. It took the better part of two hours for me to describe the baby crib I spent the first four and a half years I spent my childhood sleeping in. I hope to edit it down to a paragraph or two. That crib was the place I had numerous "first experiences" in. It was the place where lots of root ideas got drummed into my head. If I can get through that part of it, maybe the rest of what I'm attempting to describe will flow more easily.

The ritualistic magic associated with the creation of a
group mind calls for the thirteenth member of a formed group of twelve to be a stranger, in order to stimulate a
particular type of vibrational energy in the other twelve
members of the group stimulated by the presence of the stranger.

Suspicion generated by an outsider appears to raise the energy level of the whole group enough for the creation of a docetic personification of the group mind to bind them together in their group intent. A Messiah that would save the whole of them.

The thirteenth member, as a stranger in the group of twelve, acts as the rabble rouser to generate what ever energies rise to the top when suspicions of the stranger's true motives suddenly threatens betrayal of the group bond.

The word rabblerouser originated as the name of a design feature of rotating ovens mainly used to roast food products like coffee beans and peanuts. Peanut roasters are a fairly common sight at some public gatherings. The beans and peanuts, called the rabble, are placed inside a closed rotating barrel that slowly turns over a permanent source of controllable heat to
get the value added end product.

The design feature of this type of oven called the
rabblerouser is engineered to accomplish about the same results the agitator blades in a washing machine does. The agitator blades in a washing machine insure that the clothes being washed keep moving around inside the washer so that all parts of the clothing get equal exposure to the washing process.

In rotating ovens, products like coffee beans have a
tendency to slide along the inside surface of the rotating barrel which results in only one side of the bean getting fully roasted. The rouser is a bar or blade that is permanently attached to the inside wall of the barrel and acts as an obstacle for the sliding beans and agitates them so that all sides of the beans will receive optimal exposure to the heat source, and thus insuring an evenly roasted product.

Another description associated with the term rabblerouser identifies a person or persons who stirs other people up through agitation. In the old western movies some of these classical oaters were filmed in black and white, and featured mob scenes where a crowd of ordinarily good citizens would be brainwashed
into hanging the bad guy sitting in the jailhouse, before
the crooked local politicians set him scot free for bribe
money. The movies always seemed to feature the firebrands who whipped the townspeople into their murderous rage by indignantly and belligerently urging their followers to take the law into their own hands. The townspeople in these movies represented the rabble, and the firebrands who whipped them into a frenzy represented the action of the rabblerousers.


Every group appears to need an element of cohesiveness that defines the group purpose and defines the groups purpose. The rabblerousers put it all together and integrates aim that makes the mob tick. In rotating ovens it's the design feature called a rabblerouser that performs that function.

In dubious political situations, however, the results of rabblerousing can be unpredictable at best. Often enow, the end results of rabblerousing in the old western movies depended on the steely-blue careactor of the white-hatted Sheriff, and his trustworthy but sometime clumsy deputies.

Any gross miscalculations by the rabblerouser in regard to the expected response of the good guys can resolve to a shameful disintergration of the spirit of the group, and sometime a punch in the nose or worse for the rabblerouser's troubles. Such humiliation effectively puts the mob mentality genie back in the bottle and corks it, leaving the disenfranchised rabble to wander the world aimlessly like the lost and scattered tribes of the damned.

My experience in this arena leads me to think that to call this endeavor a "test" promulgates needless barriers to overcome in a somewhat nebulous situation.

The obstacle I see is being in this state without
recognizing the possibility of exercising volition. In deep
state, disconnected in some way from personality traits and the availability of memory in the regular way, that the type of memory accessed during the experience of the state is separate from our memories of the sensory experienced world of appearance (Whatever in hell THAT means?)

It's like shifting to the superconscious or global
perspective one moves to an undifferentiated awareness which is all-inclusive and everything is seen as oneself. Even if that unity exists perceptually as a collage of our rare moments, however obtained, in a different world.

It would seem as if the experimenters would be asking their subjects for specific data in that undifferentiated state. And if the experimenters themselves are unfamiliar with the unboundedness of the global state (which is hard for me to fathom since a part of us is there all the time.), then eliciting the specific response they desire, either yeah or nay, could present a helplessness that transforms into an inept haplessness, and eventually to an abandonment of
the integrity of their purpose in conducting the experiment in the first place.

The last exchanges Brian and I posted centered around my asking him some questions I hoped would bring a response that more clearly delineated his true intent in writing the things that he wrote. His responses really pleased me. I felt as though he answered me with deep sincerity, and though I suspect there is much more to be explored in
himself to come to completeness with how he really feels, I understood his earlier comments more succinctly than before. I like to ask a lot of leading questions, in any case, and I do so referencing the Golden Rule, because I want the other to ask me leading questions to get more lucid descriptions
in regard to my own experiences. Brian asked me a few
questions in his responses, but I felt his questions were
really his way of priming his own pump to come up with a more considered description of his true intent. I enjoyed having this exchange with Brian. Since we've
broken the ice with each other, I expect we can do each
other a great service without too much distraction to the group as a whole.

Back to the point I have run around in circles trying to get to. The real problem with the stated experiment is that the experimenters may not have enough familiarity with the state they are attempting to get the answers from. Like the license plate discussion about being able to recall something totally familiar, the number and letters we see on a regular basis, I said that I could get anybody to remember anybody else's license plate numbers if they had ever physically perceived them. That's because I have developed an ability to elicit the specific scenarios within another's experience field to bring their attention to the
information I will recover with them. It took me a lifetime of dealing with people in altered states, generally in hypnosis, to understand what has to be there to get them to understand they can act with volition in this state. It appears similar to getting things to happen in lucid dreaming. First and foremost, one has to become aware that they are indeed dreaming. Then, at the point of this realization, to realize that they can effect the outcomes witnessed in the dream process. That's asking a lot from oneself, especially at the onset.

The hypnosis I do with others amounts to a pre-entry
discussion about what we are attempting to accomplish by us entering state together. I don't force people to enter the state by trickery (Although I can and possess considerable resources to bring this to fruition.), the process I find most useful is just to facilitate them entering the trance state as openly and as consciously as possible in that moment, and then ask them questions about what they are experiencing as we go along. Then, as the trust and the bond
between us develops, they access the needed state pretty much on their own and tell me where they are at with it. It's not as if they suddenly become Chatty Cathys', I constantly ask them, "Tell me what you see.", "What's happening?" I attempt to keep the communication between us to what they tell me in response to my questions.

At this point, about all I help with is remind them of what we set out to do in this encounter. This is a very necessary thing to do. A person who enters this state of their own volition seems to have to release their awareness of their ability to make things happen in that state and so when they get to the place where they have all the tools they need to do work in this state, they forget why they went there and that they can make things happen. That's all I'm there for.
to ask them what they 'see' there, and to direct them to go ahead and prove to themselves that they can indeed exercise volition to accomplish their stated goals. In the past, I have taped our pre-entry discussion about what we want to happen when they are in state, and let their original purpose, as stated in their own voice, guide them to getting the results they want. If they get confused or stuck in their intent, then it's my ability to recognise this and put them back on their own chosen path once again that allows a
continuation of the flow.

In any case, however, the conscious awareness that they can act with volition in an undifferentiated global perspective is a tricky business. To merely fill out a few forms about what happened after their leaving their body, or to ask a prearranged question set of a hundred different people will not, in my opinion, get useful results. Each person who enters such states will create or maybe recreate from that undifferentiated perspective only that which will please the questioner, and usually just to get their approval so that they can feel that they have done right by God and man. The
data provided in this set and setting can appear unreliable and without achieving the desired end.

The real determinant is always the person who asks the experiencer for information regarding what they "saw" during the experience. Not only does this require a sensitivity of the condition of the experiencer and how they personally deal with being in a open-ended global state in which their regular reference points are not there to guide them, but to be able to ask them to describe what they do "see" around
them in a way that doesn't change the experience radically enough to form a reliable assessment of our bond. Like in dreams, the entire apperception of 'wot's sot before you' can change with lightening speed of the most instantaneous sort, and suddenly the experiencer is not dealing with the same environment the last question related to. The questioner has to be able to recognize the signs that this is going on, and abandon the previous effort with the same kind of immediacy displayed by the experiencer. Why bother?
It's gone. It's not that the abandoned scenario cannot be reapproached, but it's just a matter of timing. Attempting to get someone in a deep trance to switch horses in mainstream without understanding why they must forego that which confronts them in the immediacy of now seems to strain the rapport and can cause unintentional erosion of the bond between one and the other.

Just about every person I have hypnotized has told me of their own impetus that they felt like I was "there" with them, and that I am "seeing" the same things they are, except that I am relating to what they experience as if what exists in that state possesses a more differentiated pattern, and that my questions or directions for them to look at the "things" of that world is consistent with what they would have done if they could have only thought of doing it.

But, this is determined in mutual collaboration. between
friends as it were, and with the practice of patience, and open discussion of any arising obstacles, or the seeming distractions of unrelated, but joyous intercessions of recalled material serendipitously entering the picture (which can be interesting to both parties) . In such a test as has been described, the rapport necessary to ask each individual to look for the planted material in a useful way that will get the desired results of proving or disproving such things are possible cannot get done on an impersonal level of communication.

I think the problem with proving this stuff is that the
people who have the kind of experiences needed to elicit the information in a useful way, don't need the proof. I might be willing to bet you good money that I can elicit experiences you have had in the past, that made perfect sense in the specious present in which you experienced them, but have not been able to access said experiences again due to your not realizing in real time that you have the inherent ability to make it available to recall on your own. I think you realizing that you have forgotten more than many people ever gnew would be more convincing to you in a personal sense than any "test" ever created.

I'm getting complaints about not posting more often again. Sorry about that. I seem to be involved in some mysterious life changes that have left me wondering what's going on.

I suspect this new diet I have adapted bears some responsibility for what I'm feeling, or rather not feeling. I seem to have a lot more energy than usual and it's more difficult for me to sit still both physically and mentally to mull things over.

Recently, I downloaded a demo of a speed-reading program that I'm excited about. It's called AceReader Pro, and is the best program like this I have used. I have practiced the drills everyday for about a week now. I don't particularly like to do these drills, but it is something I think I owe myself to do.

The use of this program has pointed out very clearly that I can't read any faster than I can talk. I have the habit of subvocalizing as I read stuff, and these drills and games in the program are designed to help me get over or beyond doing this when I read, and the thing about subvocalizing is complicated by the fact that I read and think about what I'm reading at the same time, rather thna reading the material and then thinking about it. In a way, I suppose, I actually save time by reading and thinking at the same time because when I'm done reading about a subject, when I get done I'm through forever with it. I hardly ever read the same thing twice, because during my reading I consider as many relationships that already exists in my mind about the topic of my reading, and so when I get through reading, I've done everything I can do about it. Well, upon reflection, that may not be exactly true, because other life events do come up in such a way that it reminds me of what I've read previously, and I find myself re-organizing my data on the topic continually.

A couple of thoughts have come to me in regard to the possibility of my continuing to use this program and making any progress at all detaching my emotional connection to what I read. One of them is the possibility that I have the same habit of subvocalizing when I read people. Having an emotional connection to the world around me seems to be a big deal in my life. This could exist as my main way of making meaning of my relationship with the external sensory-perceived world. Learning to speed read could change or alter the way I perceive the sensory world considerably.

I have been surprised by the results of the reading comprehension tests that come with the program. Several times the program has more or less forced me to read faster than I could subvocalize. I was sure that upon these occasions I would not do well on the comprehension tests upon completion of the forced reading. I was wrong. The tests indicated I am comprehending the material, even without the emotional connection that subvocalizing gives me. I have scored 100% on several of the comprehension tests. This has made me feel a little more confident in what I'm attempting to accomplish by practicing these drills, and offers the possibility that my subvocalizing is totally unnecessary for me to understand the material. I also seem to be able to type a little faster. This is making me wonder if I can only type as fast as I can talk.

I have made a bargain with myself about this program. If I actually use the program every day and see any progress at all in my ability to read and comprehend faster, I will give it up and buy the program at the end of the thirty day trial period. It's only $50, and I say only because that's ten times less than most of the speed-reading programs I have tried before. Besides, it's the easiest to use of all the programs, and the most well-crafted program I've encountered. High quality software for a change. What's this world coming to?

Building a world that God can't enter.

The Genesis myth is interesting to goof on. Metaphorically it plays with loaded dice. I have been intrigued for some time now with some speculation offered recently by a woman who has spent a lot of time exploring the world view of the Gnostic sects in the early Christian startup.

She wrote that the scene in Genesis about the serpent and Adam and Eve, as perceived by the Gnostics, was that the serpent represented the docetic Christos that was sent to save the Earth from the demiurge, otherwise known as Jehovah, a nature god associated with volcanos, mountains, earthquakes, and thunderstorms with a temper to match.

The Gnostic sects, for the most part, seem to think when the spirit of the Christos entered the serpent to offer the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that would give Adam and Eve to power to be as creative equals with Jehovah, his famed temper came into play with a bang! No blame.

What was given to Adam and Eve was first shown in the serpent who could talk. In the beginning was the word. What made Adam and Eve able to live as gods was that by eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge they were imbued with the power of the word.

The entirity of modern civilization was built from use of the power of the word. Polarity as a tool of creativity. Oral tradition was created to express the difference in things both far and wide by categorizing and naming. It was enhanced by the invention of the written language. Mass distribution of the word became possible by the printing press. Further along, the invention of movies with color and sound brought the word to continuing adventures in multimedia, and is expanding exponentially by digitalization and algorithms customized to taste.

As equal creators to the nature god Jehovah we have constantly invaded his domain and built walls to shut him out of ours. Jehovah/Nature cannot enter the world we have created to escape his wrath. There are a lot of nature gods and goddesses. This condition leads me to crave, at the very least, a truce that would contain the possibility of complete peace.

I stayed up late waiting for the winds to begin galing.
Watched the late shows, all of them, and then when the wind didn't get to squally I went to bed.

I lay in bed for a while and then realized I was in a
serious discussion with myself about metaphors.

The thing about metaphors is that I didn't really understand what a metaphor was. Pre-NLP era. If someone used the term "mixed metaphor" I was really impressed. They must be geniuses. They were talking about mixed metaphors when I hadn't even figure out what a metaphor was.

It was only when I got involved with learning what I could about NLP that I began to get a grip on what metaphors were. I kept reading all these references to metaphors on NLPtalk and how useful they were to layer suggestion within, I decided to invest in buying a book featuring the skills required for using metaphor as a medium for waking hypnosis.

I don't remember the name of the author... maybe David something... but his book really opened my eyes about what a metaphor existed as. I got about halfway through the book and suddenly I got it. Not only did I finally understand what metaphor is, but understanding what people mean when they talk about metaphors cleared up what mixed-metaphors
are too. Now, I'm a genius too by my own definition. It just feels great to finally arrive.

When I first made a concentrated effort to create a metaphor that was designed to created the desired empression on the other I felt clumsy and inept. Attempting to interweave the goal of my metaphor into the elements of the story felt very heavy and awkward. It seemed to me that my subliminal efforts were hardly that at all, and worse, I felt translucent. As though even Willy the Waver saw right through me and spent most of the time he appeared to be patientlywaiting me out and letting me finish my spiel, he was figuring out what he was going to say to rain on my parade.

I sometimes thought that, but it never happened.

I knew my intent was translucent, but they didn't, and I
couldn't figure out why. It took me an amazingly long time to get the picture. To get to the place I needed to be to understand why they were not seeing through my attempts to make metaphors in the spur of the moment. They simply did not hear me when I invented my metaphors ad lib. I felt ignored and I hurt myself by resolving to emoting.

In each and every case they only heard what they thought I intended in the telling of it. They heard what they would intend if they told the same story. They saw the non-verbal cues as if they were giving them. They only saw in me and my metaphor what they thought was there, and that's what they acted like was so.

"And he grew bold this knight so bold, and round his heart a shadow... grew as he found no spot of ground by the nayme of El Dorado. " eap

This astounded me. I was free. My intent was invisible to them. I could say and do whatever I liked and they would still see only their own interpretation of my intent and behave as if what they interpreted as the truth of my intent was valid to act upon.

Even more astounding, especially when following the
realization I had been granted my most fervid wish and
prayer, to become invisible. They could not see me,
Irreducibly, I could not see them either, only myself in
them, and yet understand that we were both free of any responsibility to the other despite our mutual use of each other as mirrors. I mean, if you can't be used, what use are you?

I was free. The other was free. "Free at last, free at last, Great God Almighty...."

Even the fact that I was now free to create whatever crossed my mind in the continuum of the specious present, I continued to doubt whether my efforts were having any effect at all over in the other. After all, they were responding to their own images no matter how I attempted to influence their processes. How could I be sure my metaphors were making their mark with the other and affecting their decision-making process? Were the results I observed in my person created in the same manner? Was I fooling myself about fooling them?

About this time I realized it didn't matter. I was having so much fun fooling myself into believing my metaphors were getting the specific results I designed that it didn't
matter whether what I designed was the bird-in-hand or no. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.

This arrogant attitude affected the way I looked at NLP. As things went further and I kept getting away with telling my metaphors for my reasons and imagining that I was getting the results I wanted by the telling of them that I decided enough was enough.

This tool was the magic elixir for me. It answered not only my prayers, but it answered my questioning self in it's pendantic quest to know why I was so naturally talented at telling exaggerated lies. I mean I can tell some whoppers. Hardly ever does anyone else believe them, but I can work myself up into a hysterical fervor juking about how I got them to do exactly what I wanted them to do despite the fact that I was a smoe from the the sticks.

Isn't that a funny thing about humans? My main influence in my attempts to learn how to become an actor, or so it seemed, was Edgar Loissin. He told me several times to give the idea of becoming an actor up and develop my talent for lying. He wanted me to become a writer. A man already famous for writing offered to pay my way to a writer's retreat to help
me gain the confidence to develop my style. I still didn't
get it. I didn't get it until I finally figured out that I
could get everything I ever desired if I could ever figure
out what a metaphor is.

Typically, and the wind has even died down now at three o'clook in the morning... waiting, waiting... I've always been a day late and dollar short. Why change now?

Years ago, back when I was doing a lot of rambling around the U.S., I was picked up while hitch-hiking by a young couple near El Paso, Texas. They asked me where I was going. I gave them an indefinite answer because I didn't really know or care, I was just rambling. I liked talking to the people who picked me up. They were always strangers to me and me to them. Strangers passing each other on the road of life.

This stranger to stranger situation brought some interesting conversations to the table. We seem to drift eventually to topics of a very delicate nature. I didn't know anybody they knew to tell their secrets to. They didn't know anybody that knew me to tell my secrets to. It was just the near-perfect dynamic to get a few things off our chests away from the people who thought they really knew us.

The guy driving the car told me they were going to
eventually end up in Boulder, Colorado, but that they were going to take the backroads to get there, and they had to stop at a commune a little north of Taos, New Mexico to pick up a female friend of theirs to give her a ride to Boulder.

This sounded perfect to me. It would allow me to see some of the backcountry in an area I had never explored previously.

We camped that night near some natural hot springs where hot water oozed out of the side of a cliff into a
tub-like depression someone had carved into the rocks below. It that was big enough for several people to use it like a hot tub, and that unique visit still exists as a wonderful memory for me.

Late the next day we arrived at the New Buffalo Commune. I was very impressed with the place. There were 20-30 people of mixed gender who lived there. This event happened back in the Hippie days and that's the kind of people who lived there. They were all young people and right away it appeared they were of the variety that practiced free love, and the those possibilities presented some pretty exciting images
to contemplate.

The building was composed of a series of adobe structures. The largest building was the main gathering place for the group, and other adobe buildings which were much smaller served as bedrooms for the inhabitants. They had a garden where they grew vegetables out in front of the main building.

When we drove up to this site there were some people working in the garden and others were laboring with creating a large adobe wall that looked like it was intended to be an extension of the main building. The commune painted a very idyllic setting. Lots of smiles and hugs between the inhabitants seemed to show evidence of a true comraderie between them.

We were greeted with those smiles and hugs when we got out of the car. The couple I rode with were well-known among these people and shouts of greeting met them from all around the commune. I was pretty much ignored for the most part, so I wandered into the main building to see what it looked like inside.

I found myself in awe of the work and planning that had gone into it. The ceiling was especially impressive. It was constructed of lodgepole pine poles about 4-6 inches in diameter and stripped of their bark had a polished sheen as they lay next to each other row after row, but they were place in a geometric design that was very appealing. My first thought went to how much work had been put into their careful placement to create the exotic design they displayed.

The ceiling had a smoke hole in the very center to allow
ventilation for the fire pit in the floor of the building
with seating carved into the dirt all around it. This was a large room. It was not square, but it could easily seat
maybe 50-75 people comfortably. There were unique niches all around the room where various objects seemed to be highlighted with natural light coming from a series of holes in the adobe. The total package took my breathe away. The aesthetic appeal of the room delighted me. So much work and hand labor had gone into it, and it showed in every direction I turned. There were specific holes in the wall designed to show certain stars at pivotal times of the year coordinated to the four seasons.

Later, I asked someone who designed this room and the commune itself. I was told that one particular couple originated it and guided it development over the first years, but they had left and no longer lived there. It shocked me somewhat that they could walk away from such beauty and hard work.

The next morning brought an answer with the arrival of some new people to the commune. A young family composed of a couple with two kids. They had been in correspondence with the group about coming there to live. They came in the standard transportation of the time, a gaily painted Volkswagon van loaded to the gills with their possessions. Immediately, several of the inhabitants started poking through their stuff and having a good old time arguing about who was going to get what. I was a little amazed by this scavenger-like activity, and so I asked the guy I rode in with what was going on.

He told me that the people who came to the commune had to contribute all their possessions to the group in order to be part of it. That was the deal. The new couple appeared somewhat disconcerted by the scramble for their stuff, but said nothing. Earlier I had asked my host how the people there got food and drink. Coming from a agricultural background t was obvious the small garden would not provide
nearly enough to support this many people. He told me they got help from county welfare, foodstamps, and other charitable organizations.

Mostly, he said, they lived off the money and possessions of the new arrivals. This appeared to be the reason the people who originated the commune had left it to the scavengers. Their idealism had been destroyed by such evidence of the dark side of human nature. The new people arrived with such high hope and deluded idealism, and later moved on, poorer,
but hopefully wiser for the experience.

I was living up in New Jersey with the notion of becoming a professional actor. I saw an advertisement in the newspaper about a hypnosis school in Irvington, NJ, which was just a few miles from where I lived. I decided to take the offered course that met a coupla nights a week for 18 weeks. It was operated by a guy named Harry Aarons. I was 24 years old.

Next month that will have been forty years ago. During the entire time I attended his classes I didn't think I was going into state. Typical... eh? The event of graduation was
significant. The guest speaker was Milton Erickson. I didn't know anything about him. I thought he had been invited to speak as a kindness to an old man who used to be somebody. I had the youthful impression that Harry was indulging him in recognition of
his being the founder of the Ethical Hypnosis Association, and that he had probably long since passed his usefulness. Stupid boy!

When he arrived at the Center he came in walking with two walking canes. It was obvious that his walking was a real struggle for him. I empathized with him immediately. He had the kindest eyes I thought I had ever seen. I associated him with my maternal grandfather. When he got to the front of the class they sat him in his wheelchair. Harry went through the opening ceremony with his usual aplomb. I didn't particularly like Harry. He was very forceful and that antagonized my problem with authority figures at that time of my life.

Dr. Erickson just sat there with a little smile on his face until he was introduced. Considering the obvious struggle he had walking I was surprised when he stood up to talk to us. He talked about ethics a lot. This irritated me somewhat. I was young, dumb, and full of cum, and definitely not in the mood for all this ethics jibberjabber. He talked like my father with his penchant for Ideals. I didn't wanna hear this ethics stuff from this half-dead old man, so I went through the motions of listening politely. Presently, I realize that I was deep in a somnambulistic state, but at the time I considered myself to be necessarily tolerant just to get through this ritual.

Harry had told us before hand that he was teaching us Ericksonian Hypnosis. This had no meaning to me. I didn't even connect Ericksonian Hypnosis with this old man standing, with great difficulty, before us. So, when he spoke of using his own brand of hypnosis, I didn't realize how concerned he was that we do so from an ethical point of view. Can you imagine his concern that this variegated group of 23 students was going to go out into the world in his nayme? We were all totally under his spell by this time.

In addition to his "talk", he called each of us up to the front of the class to give us our certificates of completion and a formal letter that made us associate members of the Ethical Hypnosis Association, and talked to each of us for three or four minutes individually. It appeared as if he knew us all. I figured Harry must have filled him in on us previously. I have no recall of what he said to me. I do remember he looked straight into my eyes as he talked to me.

I wrote earlier that he had the kindest eyes I had ever witnessed. While this impression has remained with me all these years later, he was not a particularly "nice" personality. He spoke softly, but very directly with absolute confidence in what he had to say. His word was unquestionable.

When we finished with the graduation ceremony, the graduating students and about twenty former students were invited into another room the visitors were not allowed to attend. Erickson spoke further for about 20 minutes. Afterwards, Harry and he gave a demonstration of non-verbal hypnosis. Then we went back into the main room and had
refreshments and chatted it up for a while and went our own separate ways.

It was years before I realized how drastically that one night changed my life. I came out of this encounter with more ethical consideration than I really felt I wanted or needed. The membership in the Association allowed us to open our own hypnosis business, and offered us protection if we got hassled by those who found such activity objectionable. I went through the motions of opening such a business later, but found I was not interested in or even very qualified to run a business. Except for using hypnosis with friends for non-therapuedic purposes hypnosis got put on the back burner until I read Frogs Into Princes.

I stumbled across this book in the local community college library while searching for books on hypnosis. I was fascinated by the notion of providing myself with the options for self-communication described in the book where it talked about "parts" having conversations with each other and the way NLP provided a negotiation stance in this regard.

Even more interesting was learning that Bandler and Grinder had modeled Erickson. It took me a while to recognize their descriptions were about this old man I thought I had pretty much ignored and figured I had long since put behind me. It was only upon reading Frogs that I realized what had happened in New Jersey all those years ago.
When I figured out that I had fooled myself about his competency, after all, Frogs came out twenty years after I met Erickson, all those episodes of moroseness and self doubt after the few hours I had spent with him became more clear. Things that had happened after our encounter revealed how deeply I had been moved by the power of his suggestions.

I have always been pretty much of an empath and seemed to "gnow" things I couldn't consciously access the source for. Previous to Erickson I was fairly belligerent and defensive when people questioned my sources for saying some of the things I said. Besides that, I was an inveterate liar. My "lying" was not really all that harmful to others, it was mostly a tendency to exaggerate my experiences in life to give the impression that I was far more knowing and much more experienced and wise than I really was, and it was me that suffered the humiliation of my own translucency. This isn't all that unusual for a young man, but I took it to unbelievable extremes and it was obvious that no such experience existed. I came by it fairly naturally, my mother and father did the same thing during my formative years. They were both school teachers, and I was constantly exposed to the way they treated others with deference to their face, and then I heard what they really thought about those people at home. I thought that creating a false image of self-esteem for other people's eyes for my own benefit was just what people in general did in public.

In all of my life there are not very many
who would give all they have
just to love me a while,
and those who have given
have just taken my misery,
and later they found out
they did so in vain.
Because the memories they started
didn't go when they parted and
I felt like I wasn't to blame.
But the answer don't matter
despite all the questions,
their loving still hoped me'
to conquer my pain.

Suddenly, after my confrontation with Erickson, with all his strong suggestions about ethics, I was not comfortable in the least with my tendency to exaggerate... to lie... and I eventually suffered a lot of humiliation in excising this habit from my daily affairs. I didn't know why I was confronting myself in this way. After all, a little white lie never hurt anybody, right?

The only way I knew how to stop lying and start telling the truth or refrain from making
overly exaggerated claims was to stop myself in the middle of one of my grandiose stories, and admit to my listeners that I had gone over the top, and to offer them a more accurate accessment of what really did or did not happen. Generally, this act of contrition was not what people wanted to hear. They seem to have preferred the lies even though it appeared obvious to them that I was not being straight with them. For reasons I could not fathom it was extremely important to me.

I was possessed of other personality attributes that come into conflict with Erickson's ethical considerations that left me conflicted. Since I couldn't figure out why I kept betraying myself in these areas I didn't know how to deal with what was happening. I became very depressed for a good number of years. I literally thought I was going crazy, and I received a lot of support for that notion from others. They appeared to rather enjoy me making a fool of myself.

I began therapy after I got out of the Navy and went back to school. I remained in therapy for years. I felt as if I got the most benefit from the psychologist I was seeing, but in typical fashion arrogantly suspected that a person of my depth needed to see a full-blown psychiatrist to really get to the bottom of my problems. I saw a psychiatrist at Duke University Hospital for a while, and then saw the error of my ways. I went back to the psychologist who didn't really care about his prestige or the money he was getting.

When I read Frogs, I began to understand what had happened or what might have happened during my encounter with Harry Aarons and Milton Erickson. I became intensely desirous of getting involved with NLP to explore how this earlier event with those two might have been responsible for not knowing why I was in conflict with the way I was raised and own own personality quirks. I seemed quite aware that the "high ideals" my father beat me into submission to was certainly a contributing factor. I read Frogs just furing the year after my father died.

I had moved in with my mother to help her with his dying. My father was nearly 88 years old, and my mother was 84, and she simply couldn't handle his situation physically. He was
bedridden and had been for a few years. He had to be rolled over to prevent bed sores every two hours and my old mother simply could not make it happen. He died early one morning, and although we had reached some degree of peace between us during the last year of his life, especially during my stay there in the last three weeks, when he died of pneumonia I reached to feel his forehead to see if he was really dead for sure. There was not a moment of his life that I did not live in fear of him, even when he got old and feeble and I was a strapping six foot tall and boxed at two hundred fifteen pounds. I thought I hated him. At his funeral I was the only one who openly wept including my mother. It amazes me how my attitude has changed since his death. The man had beaten me with regularity and severely enough for doctor's visits until I got big enough to stop him. Presently, I feel and experience deep remorse for the way I treated him. Despite the farce that my life has been, he was always there for me, and supported me in any way he could despite the fact that I sometimes publically ridiculed him in front of those who held him in deep respect. I have let a lot of people down who have been foolish enough to love me. No mas. I don't let people love me anymore. It's just too dangerous for their own sake. The ones who are already stuck there know fully well the price they have paid, and many regret the fact that they can't stop themselves from loving me anyway. Geez! Where did that come from? Writing! I never know what's gonna come from my fingers. I hope they don't read this blog. I visited my father's grave just yesterday. He's still in there. I'm pretty sure he won't read it.

There was another factor that come into play with this. I got a herniated disk from an auto accident up in Nebraska that had to be operated on during this same time. I was in extreme pain myself. The operation was totally successful and my recouperation was complete, but at that time, it was the only extended pain I have ever experienced. Good genes. My father never experienced any pain during his demise. He finally died from what the Home Nurse called "the old people's friend". I was the person who decided not to stop the pneumonia. He had informed me earlier to let him go. I obeyed him.

When my father died, my mother did not fare well. She fell on the church steps and ended up in the hospital herself, and her physician would not tolerate her living alone. I was already living there, even though I owned my own house, and I was the only single sibling, so I stayed with her for another two and a half years so she would not have to go to a rest home. It was like living with an Alzheimer's patient. The situation just about drove me really crazy. During one of her moments of forgetfulness she mistook me for her husband. She called me Bill, and told me exactly what she thought of their wayward son. I could not abide staying with her for very long after that. My youngest brother got me a job as an engineer where he was working. My older sister, the responsible one, found a companion to live with her, and I moved back in my house and joyfully went back to work. I avoid seeing my mother if at all possible. I have not been back to her house to visit in a long time now. She even lied to me. My father tried to tell me about her. I call HIM a liar. Much regret. He always told me I just wouldn't listen. Even in death he proved himself to be correct. Why could I have not known when he was alive so that I could tell him and ask his forgiveness. Why could he have not asked for mine? I guess we just didn't have it in ourselves to be open with each other.

I saved the money from my unemployment check to take Practitioner's training. I went to Wisconsin to study with Rex and Carol Sykes. I learned a lot from them, but I did not particularly care for Rex personally. He didn't do anything out of the way to merit my discomfort, and it did not interfere with the studies. I have always felt an unwavering need when I'm through with a teacher to kill the Buddha, and I found ways to kill Rex and Carol's influence with me by the by. Over the next few years I studied with Carmine down in Atlanta by attending three or four of his weekend seminars. After I thought I had gotten as much from him as was possessed growth potential, I killed his influence off too. I attended Bandler's DHE course, and never had any desire to return after that. However, I did not kill his influence for some reason, so I guess I figure he still has something to teach me. I was invited to attend a couple of other seminars for free while paying my own expenses by a couple of trainers I met and grew to respect due to my participation on NLPtalk, and for some reason I'm still open to those folks too. I doubt very seriousl if they remember me during the interim. Humility has come hard for me. even while gnowing through painful experience that modesty is the art of power.

I doubt if I will return to more NLP training sessions. I retired at sixty two to get a small check to live on. It's very difficult for me to tolerate the presence of others. By choice, I keep very few friends who I let visit. I'm not using NLP for any other purpose than my own personal life now. I move into my patter during normal conversation and do what I think will help without resorting to formalities or asking for recompense. I would rather do without or even die unwisely than to enter the public domain for any reason. I am retired from public work now, and have settled into a rigidly reclusive lifestyle except for what
communicating I do over the internet. One friend I have learned to feel comfortable around visited me briefly last night, we seem to fall into some very animated and interesting conversations every time we find ourselves in each other's company. He is the only real for sure genius of great, seemingly unlimited intellectual reach I have had the privilege of being friends with for over a few years, he is even more brilliant than he realizes, I think, and when he left my house we shook hands. His hand was the only other human I have touched for weeks. I have an old friend I've known for thirty years that is much more intelligent than I, especially in regard to personal insight and practicality, I have no idea why he doesn't ignore me and go his own way after spitting in my face. We lead totally different lives, and I am sure it has been embarrassing more than once to openly claim me as his dear friend. But, he's steady as the good earth, and I feel fairly sure he would welcome me in his house if I found myself in dire straits.

I have another friend who is Native American. It's taken a good twenty years to convince him of his inborn leadership and profound quickness. In the hypnosis sessions we have shared together he has met his true warrior nature by nayme, and he has carried me to meet his eternal teacher who sits in the cave with the blue stone light in a totally foreign universe light years away. He went from working in a factory on the assembly line to teaching at a couple of community colleges and owning a growing collection of rental units.

I have another friend who doesn't know we are friends yet. It's inevitable though. He has no where else to turn. He is not a youngush man. He has tried to let others inside only for them to find them fearful of such astounding profundity. His depth of understanding is such that even trying to meet them halfway puts their minds in shadowy places they are unable to bear.

Although I'm fairly sure I am playing the fool with myself, and probably it's some sort of hold-over from the days of my youthful exaggerations, I have the distinct impression that no one can come to my house without my tacit agreement. The front door is wide open whether I am at home or no. I have a telephone, but it's unplugged. I use the connection for the internet. I have made exactly three telephone calls n the last two years. I don't need either medium to communicate instantly with anyone I choose, but they do. Why would they not?

Finally, I think I have resolved the mystery of what happened during my encounter with Erickson. I feel like I understand what happened. I am not unhappy about running into him, on the contrary, he probably affected my life in those two hours we were in each other's company with others than any other person I've met. I was just way too young and too naive to understand the implications of my actions. I do feel that I could have been better informed about the possible consequences of what might transpire from that time, and yet it seems consistent with the rest of my life such that he saying "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." might aptly stand as the perfect description of how I conduct my affairs. Act first, then try to figure out what happened. I expect death to result from doing things this way, and then I'll have eternity to figure out my final act of defiance. No
blame.

I looked up the term "fool" in my unabridged. One of the definitions is that of a court jester. Many of us have seen movies or plays where this careactor appears dressed in a classical uniform with the multicolored clothing and the hat with the top that droops.

Usually it is someone who is hired to break the monotony of formal proceedings and who allows the assemblage to see the ridiculousness of attempting to solve problems with the same old formulae that have worked in the past. Hopefully without the Queen drawing herself up into a solemn-faced majestic posture and declaring "We are not amused. Off with his head!"

During the last few years of television it appears that stand-up comedians seem to be prolific in getting jobs as serious actors. Many sit-coms use comedians as actors for leading roles. The comedians themselves suggest that when they are not onstage they are tragic figures who have learned to play the fool.

That's an interesting expression, "Playing the fool."

Just now I went downstairs to make my morning coffee and get on my exercise machine for a while. While I was working away counting repetitions I suddenly saw an image of my father from a long time ago when I was a little boy. He was participating in a student-faculty game, and he had stuffed a pillow under his shirt and was "cutting the fool" out on the basketball court. The crowd went wild to see this normally serious, very dignified man playing the part of a buffoon. In those moments he became endearing to them.

Of course, the court jester is imitating someone his audience recognizes all too well. Both in the people around them and in themselves. Have we all not taken ourselves too seriously on some occasion without recognizing what other people readily see?

If on such occasions a person points out our behavior as caricature to everyone present, do we not feel humiliated to the point of despair when they laugh uproariously at our expense? In a best case scenario we recognize we have gone over the top of believability and laugh with them. At worst, we take offense and stalk off in some indignant fashion to plot the offender's murder most foul.

They made us look like an idiot when we sought to be seen as wise. Idiotic behavior does exist or there would be nothing to compare such behavior with. There are people who constantly take themselves seriously without realizing the inappropriateness of their grandioso posturing.

I have done this. I have done that. Within the context of the surroundings I have found myself throughout my life I have played every role possible. Sometime deliberately, and other times without a clue.

Once, many years ago, when I was living in Key West, Florida a group of New York City emigres decided to put together an amateur theater. They were for the most part homosexual men who had been active in that cities theater crowd, and the plays they wanted to present had a gay theme. To me this was a direct challenge to my image of myself as an actor. I decided to audition for a part that was very "Nelly". That is, the role required an effeminate careactor. The directors of the group actually let me read for the part. I'm pretty sure they knew beforehand what they were in store for. I do not exhibit this type of behavior very well, but I had been around such people a lot, and I thought I would be able to pull it off. They laughed their heads off! It was the silliest thing I had ever tried to do in the theater. I slithered out of there feeling deeply disgusted with myself for ever thinking I could fool the professionals.

I seem sure there have been times I didn't even catch on that I was being mocked for acting foolish. On these occasions, the laughter and ridicule would suddenly die down, and be replaced with an awkward silence, and yet, there I stood, still yammering on, as if something I had not witnessed was the cause of their laughter. Why would they not then begin to entertain serious doubts of my intellectual competence? No blame. I can be a very gullible person.

My gullibility appears to exist as the bottom line of how I learn things. With some unfamiliar activities where I have never witnessed the actual performance of some rarely demonstrated, incredibly intricate routines, I may play the fool over and over again. Whatever humility I may possess springs directly from humiliation. Modesty is the art of power.

Yes, I am a fool. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. ;-)

"The illusion is the lesson itself."

What a strange thing to write. I thought I knew exactly what I pretended to when writing what I wrote. Yet, to write about what I wrote in lieu of writing about what I would have written in it's stead, fairly exudes Befuddlement!

I like pretending as much or more than the next person. Pretending stuff is just the way I dream it 'should' be... just for the hell of it... and it appears soothing to my soul. It seemed to have taken a long time to realize that the soothing I did for my soul's sake placed an unwitting price on my head. I made the deal ignoring the fleeting peripheral awareness that I was not really willing to pay the price embedded within my treasured ignorance. Soon, I would learn more about learning, and the price exacted from learning that learning is a sham.

In the past, I endeavored to pretend that what I had been taught to think was real, when it really wasn't, no matter the price. Like many kids I was deadly serious about learning whatever it took to get me on my own, and often, my people did not support what I thought was real. Still don't. No blame.

Both of my parents were school teachers. It didn't take forever to learn that learning was a sham. Learning reeks of political indoctrination, unwittingly or no, that told me culturally the politically expedient way to conduct my personal affairs, in order to live in peace and good will. Follow the party line. Render unto Jesus. And you'll get a gold watch and a respectable headstone.

This boilerplate hysteronics is served up sereptitiously with a perpetual occult price to pay to please it's greedy pundits. I pompously pretended all this rhetorical folderol was true for a mere pat on my head and the stars and stripes up my butt, All during this time I am pretending to some exotic bookish wisdom while selling my soul at the price of slave labor.

I never openly confronted the unconscious mourning of the loss of my innocence until it nearly crushed me behind my mask of pretentions. How could I have knowned? I only saw my mask in the mirror on the wall.

Pretending eventually pounded me senseless. I would later ignore my pretentions as the price I paid for learning how to get laid. Now that I'm old and staid, my memories of those escapades exists as an old friend's way of showing me how the game is played. Hopefully to watch enraptured while muttering "How could I have been so courageous... and survived so long?"

Time to go play my flute. I play a lot of nursery rhyme songs these days. Rewriting my life includes rearranging the music. Just variation on theme. I have no elaborate scheme to whack away the sands of time any faster than comes by the seat of my pants.

Digital. It is being discovered that the universe is digitally oriented. I read a couple of articles on a new development in the communications and networking arena. It seems as if photons are composed of two parts. One with a positive spin and the other with a negative spin. This yin-yang composition allows for binary encodement such that communication using this technology would mean instance communication with no latency problems.

Employing this technology, the transfer of info would be instantaneous in any part of the known universe. The machinery needed to make this happen already exists. Bell Laboratories are already on top of it and have built prototypes that work. The possibility for instant real time networking threatens monumental overload. Everybody would know everything in the immediacy of it's occurrence. This is based on the theory that while the speed of light may experience certain restraints, the speed at which photons communicate cannot be measured, but is estimated to exist magnitudes faster than the speed of light itself.

Overload? Actually, I think there is a part of each of us that can access everything all at once in total rapture. Once experienced, such an event might pose real problems for some. In my case, the experience of such momentous occasions dictated how I lived my life. I wanted these moments of enrapturement to be of constant presence to the
exclusion of other influences. I became ecstasy's bitch. There was not another soul on earth's whose value to me exceeded my desire to re-experience the ecstasy I
experienced in certain moments of pure joy. Such is not exactly and upbeat social strategy. No blame.

I followed every clue... even rumors... to the exclusion of excellent advice to the contrary. I refused to allow someone else's conscience be my guide for my personal behavior, Alone, however, I was searching a huge dark warehouse with a small penlight. I needed more light.

I've just finished reading a series of articles on Dark Matter on information websites that explained such stuff, They say 95% of the universe is filled with Dark Matter. Earth is considered Dark Matter because it doesn't produce it's own light that present technology can detect from far away. Things like neutrinos don't matter. Literally. They are barely atomic. Their weight is so minimal they're barely considered matter at all.

With a universe almost overflowing with Dark Matter I may have to negotiate this dark universe with the little light I do possess. It's so small. Barely a point of awareness. Availing myself of it's presence more readily appears to require that I let go of even more of the false security of what I think matters. Will it ever end? Do I have to be-co-me a neutrino... again? Man... whatta drag! I was doing so well...

I remember one event that made me ecstatically happy. I literally mean ecstatic. I was completely enraptured by this event for about three days.

I visited my youngest brother in California. He was living in Riverside with his bride from England. I was not his only guest. His English bride had taken in a fellow Englander. An old man who had been in a fight with his brother who was even older. They were both in their eighties. I was completely fascinated by this old man. The brothers had come to the U.S. to help build
Silskorski's(?sp) first helicopter prototype.

He had certain habits he indulged on a daily basis. He got up each day and dressed in a suit and tie, went out to the front porch, sat in a straight back chair and lit a long cigar, and silently smoked it while he stared off
into space smiling.

I was writing poetry during that phase of my life. I finally understood why he did when I wrote:

I knew an old man with a smile on his face,
and he would sit all day in his special place,
and he would wait for the paper
that would come to the door about three.
Then, he would read that paper
until he read it clear through,
because he knowed if he read it,
then it must be true,
and the things that he saw in his mind
was not a dream.

Growing old ain't half bad,
but in getting old it get hard to see,
but if yo' light shines bright
in the middle of the night,
and you talk to the dwarves
and then to Snow White,
then you'll smile all the while
and call out "Jubilee!"

Jubilee, jubilee...
There are none so blind
as those who just won't see.
You can turn to the left
or you can turn to the right
or you can turn to the Lord
in yo' little white light,
and then you'll smile all the while,
and call out Jubilee.

After I wrote the above I created some music to accompany it so I could play my guitar and sing it in the coffee houses and bars I often sang in those days. I sang it to a kind of jumpy tune and it always brought me the most applause and seemed to get people excited. The problem was that I only had the one verse and dual choruses. It didn't last long enough.

However, I knew from experience that once a poem like this came to me and ended like this. I had never been able to write more later. It was almost like the very idea of adding more later was jinxed.

I had been on the road bumming around the country for about two years after that occasion. I lived as a beggar and slept where I could at night. That is, if I could find a safe place to sleep. Many times I existed in a huge pool of fatigue and hallucinations. I stopped by my parent's house to see them, and to stay a few days to rest up.

I didn't like to go there even though I was always welcome. It was very difficult to explain why I was doing what I was doing to them. It was even more difficult for them to understand why their oldest son was living a homeless lifestyle, and exposing himself to the dangers of road life year after year. My "go ye therefore" explanations fell on deaf ears.

On about the third day after I had caught up on my sleep I began to play my guitar and sing. I sang the song Jubilee. While I was playing and singing I began to see the next verse in the peripheries of my consciousness. I grabbed a pen and a piece of paper and started writing. What I wrote perfectly matched the first verse.

I couldn't believe it. This had never happened to me before. Everything about it was "right" for me. I played it over and over until the two verses became one. For me it was a miracle. I found myself delighted beyond measure. I couldn't believe my good fortune. I wanted to share it with others. My mother's response was, "Yeah, yeah... that's nice." and she went back to playing Solitaire. Nobody knew what I had done but me.

It didn't matter. I was in heaven. I giggled and laughed and carried on like the madman everyone thought I was. I existed in a pale white light that surrounded me everywhere I went. If I fell from this ecstasy, all I had to do was just repeat the words and it all came back again. No one expected less from me. We all knew I was insane anyway. Why would I not act like it? It was my own secret that no one else could share in. Only after about three days did it come to the place where just reciting those words did not immediately bring about great joy of inestimable value.

That smiling old man he turned to me,
and said, "Son, don't you know
that this life ain't free,
that you pay for the right to call yo'self a man.
Now,a man is a vessel of the the Lord up above,
and he sends down his message on the wings of a dove,
And you've gotta clear yo' mind
just to sit and understand.
Then time will greet you with a smile,
and faith will walk that extra mile.
You can forget all the things
that make you fret and fuss
as you plot and you plan,
and you whine and you cuss.
Give it all to the Lord
as you call out Jubilee."