Chance In Plain Sight

It was perfect! Just beside the South Portland end of the Casco Bay Bridge, on the south western bank. He'd spent four weeks carrying material for the shelter and now it was done. Sometimes it was from dumpsters in Portland's West End, sometimes it was from South Portland's Harbor Side neighborhoods. He had nothing better to do with his time each day, so he felt he could at least make himself useful and prepare for a long winter.

The spot he chose was on a steep slope that caught the afternoon and evening sun while blocking the north wind. It was really amazing how the temperature – even on cold cloudy days – increased significantly on that side of the bridge each day.

Thinking back, to the late summer, before this gathering began, he'd noticed that occasionally people would hop along the large rocks below him. The rocks were placed there during the bridge's construction, partially in the waters of the bay. Kids especially had fun romping along this rugged edge.

So building up a tangled camouflage of thin sticks and pine branches (since pine doesn't lose its needles as fast as other trees lose their leaves), then tying them tightly to each other with brown hemp twine so effectively, hid his presence nicely. From below it looked like giant bird's nest, but blended well with the dense bushes on either side.

Once the “nest” part was secure, he sat for a long time one day planning out the interior. After finding pieces of a torch-cut oil barrel on the beach and a lobster buoy post, construction of a rudimentary shovel was simple. The spot on the hill was fairly flat for about ten square feet. But that wasn't enough. He needed to lengthen it to allow for lying down. The excavation was challenging. He kept hitting fist-sized stones that would dent his shovel. Twice he had to get more of the barrel pieces and improve the shovel. But eventually the area had been cleared out and leveled off sufficiently.

On the other side of the bridge were thousands of Artemisia vulgaris plants. They are normally thought of as an invasive weed, but he knew from his days as a graduate student in biology, that they smelled quite nice, and they had an interesting attribute when thoroughly dried: they turned into a cotton-like substance that held together and never crumbled. For days he harvested the plants and brought them down into the nest, hanging them upside down until they dried. Then when they were dry, he removed the large stems and rubbed the branches and leaves between the palms of his hands to the point where they turned soft. Within about two weeks he had a very soft, insulating layer of puffy plant material, nearly four inches deep on his “floor.”

Up to that point he had been sleeping in Mill Creek Park or Deering Oaks Park during the day (if he could get away with it), then building his nest at night. It astounded him how much he could get done in each night.

Maine had been blessing him with a string of hot dry weather; nearly a month's worth. But it was not to continue. One day while he was in Portland, he saw the storm clouds rolling in from the west. He immediately thought about the floor of his nest.

He walked as fast as he could, down through the parking lot area, then past Brian Boru's on Center Street when the rain started. He stopped to put on his poncho. Crossing on to York Street, then he practically ran across the bridge to the South Portland, he was utterly exhausted by the time he got to the small ramp which led down into the park area on the opposite side of the bridge. There, he waited in the rain until the people who had been walking around were in their cars and leaving, before finally making his way down, and under the bridge, along the hillside, to the nest.

He crawled in the entrance and was happy to see that his laughably built thatched roof was just starting to leak. The rain got stronger and stronger, until it was a downpour. It was one of those terrible moments when he involuntarily summed up his life situation. Kneeling there in the human version of a bird nest, with rain dripping all over his hard work, and peering across the small harbor at the cars traveling along Interstate 295, he sighed. They had shelter, gas, heat and transportation all in one package. He looked down at his water-wrinkled and pale hands at that time... From this present moment he remembered back to that day, and that he had repeated his most comforting mantra: I will find a way.

His thoughts returned to his present shelter success. He smiled to himself. The air was getting chilly. Nights temperatures were dropping down to near freezing and days were rarely above 45 degrees. Half the leaves were still on the trees, but the bright oranges, yellows and reds had faded from their faces.

He had timed things well.

Beneath him was a soft, clean cotton comforter. It lay across two folded sleeping bags. They were on top of a pile of thin foam remnants he had scored on Commercial Street, and managed to stuff into a large laundry duffel bag for carrying over the bridge. And below them was his very well-dried cottony artemisia plant cushion. Before completing this pile of relative comfort with the foam, he had felt the cold of the earth below him; but no more. And he smiled again as he recalled how hanging up his artemisia after that late summer rain storm had entirely returned it to its puffy self.

He'd fixed the rain problem by interlacing plastic bags through the sticks of the roof, which formed a gentle dome. And on one particularly warm fall night he stuffed cattail (Typha) heads that he had harvested in the marsh beside Hannaford's Mill Creek supermarket, on the inner side of the plastic bags.

On the same night he managed to cover the top of the nest with an enormous, black tarp that he'd “borrowed” from the boat yard. It was big enough to fold in half for extra thickness. He tied it to the side supports of the nest and then covered it with all manner of thin sticks, dead weeds and small branches, which were held fast by more twine. His ever present utility knife, had become his best friend—a life saver. He kept it on him day and night, even when he slept.

On the inside of the walls was a layer of extra pieces of the black tarp, then stuffed with dry grass and cattail heads. There were padded blankets, sewed through with twine, into the insulating plant matter and then looped through the tarp, using a large sail needle. This give the interior a pleated look that he was quite proud of.

Early on in the process, he realized the future value of the rocks he had excavated while shoveling. And there was a section of the nest where he had kept these rocks in three five gallon buckets. Larger head-sized rocks were hauled up from the edge of the water. By stacking them carefully, he was able to build two very acceptably flat shelves, complete with a cat litter tray as a makeshift “sink” between them. It was his “kitchen counter.”

It was obvious that he could not have a fire without the smoke being seen from the road above, or from the opposite shore in Portland. This he pondered throughout the fall. Several ideas came and went. But in the end he settled on the idea of simple body heat as his primary way of keeping warm. He knew if there was snow it would create an igloo effect which would help even more. And with all his other insulating material, it was likely that he would be just fine at just above freezing—maybe even warmer. In this way, clean water could be kept and also food items that would need refrigeration, right there along with him in the shelter.

Since becoming homeless, he'd worked out a deal with his cousin who lived in Portland, to stand in as his “residential address” for his Food Stamp card and to receive the letters from DHHS. The cousin had a wife, two teen age boys and one little girl, so there was no room at his house to stay. He knew DHHS was far too busy to check up on where he was actually living, and he didn't have another meeting with them until the spring. At that time he would be able to work at the job promised to him by that same cousin, doing landscaping, and hopefully finding a more permanent place to live. He had loaned his cousin money five years earlier, and then forgiven the debt. It seemed like an even trade to be assisted in this way. And the cousin was more than happy to receive mail for a family member.

He really did want a way of cooking food though. So, in the last month he had saved his bottle return money and purchased eight small stove-sized propane canisters from Reny's in Portland, which came with a tiny, free stove head. Using the rocks from the five gallon buckets, he made a small walled-in structure to house the propane outside the shelter and double as his cooking stove base. He had found an eight inch fry pan at Good Will for $1.00, which was all he'd ever used even when he had an apartment and plenty of money.

To prevent carbon monoxide poisoning while cooking, he knew he'd have to cook outside. He tested his method by opening the fabric covered door, which, with old leather straps, hinged upward and then sideways to provide a roof over the stone stove set-up, outside. He cooked his first meal a week before finishing the shelter; a small steak, some instant potatoes (complete with proper butter and milk), and a can of green beans. It was the most delicious meal he'd ever had. The process worked like a charm. He wouldn't be able to cook every day, but a few times a week would keep his morale up, save him from having to pay more for prepared food and get some warm meals into his body.

Bathing was going to be a matter of sponge-bath style. In the winter he could melt snow for the water. But until then there was a drinking fountain up in the park that he could use each day, then bring the water down to bathe.

Peeing was no problem, he was man after all. And he had another dedicated five gallon bucket and an old toilet seat for “other business.” “Flushing” was simply a matter of walking down to the water's edge and dumping the bucket in the bay.

In this way, he checked survival items off in his mind: Shelter, check. Heat, check. Refrigeration, check. Cooking, check. Pee and poop, check and check. Things were definitely coming together.

He was quite tired by the end of that final winter-preparation day. But, with the $2.00 he had left, he made his way up under the bridge and over to Shaw's at Mill Creek to buy a celebratory beer. He wasn't a drinker, but it seemed like the appropriate thing do. And for the first time in many weeks he would be able to sleep comfortably at night. He could even sleep-in in the morning.

He walked into the market and straight for the beer cooler. He wasn't used to picking out beer, but he wanted the most bang for his buck, so he went straight to the bottom shelf. Among the malt liquors he found an actual BEER; a large blue 25 oz. can, calling itself “Natty Daddy.” Eight percent alcohol, more than two servings worth! Perfect. He said to himself. He brought it to the counter and paid the $1.09 (counting tax and deposit), still enough for a muffin in the morning.

The sun was already below the horizon as he walked down the street with his paper bag. He was feeling quite happy, and couldn't help smiling the whole way to Thomas Knight Park. The air was really getting nippy. He looked back and forth, then took his well worn path to the shelter.

He opened the gnarly door and crawled inside. Permeated with satisfaction, he left the door partially open while he cooked up a pan of soup. As it began to bubble on the stove, he cracked the beer. He listened to the lapping of the waves against the rocks below, he knew he had...Found a way. He was hiding, right out in plain site.

The beer lasted all evening and he ate his soup, enjoying every gulp of cheap brew and every bite of beef stew with the general extraordinary pleasure that most people only feel once in a life time...

By about 9:00 PM, the stove had been put away, the door was closed. It was surprisingly warm; toasty even in his shelter. He turned off the small flashlight that was standing straight up beside him.

On the edge of consciousness he saw Mill Creek Park in his mind, adorned in the bright, soft leaf cover of spring. The ducks floated by and children played around the benches and in the newly cut grass. Sun poured over everything, as radiant as God's own Light... Joyfully the vision transited him into a very restful sleep.

About half way through the night he was suddenly awoken by a terrible sound. It was a woman. She was screaming, “No! No! I can't get in! God, no!!”

He heard several men shouting things back and forth. He sat up immediately. He debated whether to go outside and investigate. His natural instinct to DO something got the better of him and he rushed to put his shoes on.

Upon opening the shelter door he saw a bright golden light shifting and reflecting off the water from the bridge above. Sirens howled out far away in the distance. Immediately he knew there had been some kind of accident.

He rushed down the path and out under the bridge, running as fast as he could. Getting to the ramp that wound its way up to the bridge he could barely make out flames under the hood of a car that was smashed into his side of the road.

He ascended the ramp as if each step were propelling him through the air in ten foot intervals. It was like the flying dreams he often had, where he could just will himself into the air; like he was being lifted along. He hardly even felt his feet touch the ground.

At the top, as he stood and surveyed the scene, he realized that an east bound car had somehow flipped sideways 360 degrees over the median strip and landed back on its wheels in the westbound lane. Traffic was stopped all around.

A woman who, due to he scrapes and bruises, had apparently been thrown from car, kept trying to run to it and then stepping back. The smell of gasoline was everywhere.

Without really thinking about it, he sprinted over to the concrete barrier that separated the sidewalk from the road. The side door and where the driver's door had been were facing him, but that entire side of the minivan was pressed up against the concrete barrier.

The woman on the road was beside herself. Several drivers who had gotten out to help restrained her from going any closer. He could see that flames were now making their way across the front seat and the thick clouds of black smoke from the burning plastic of the dashboard and steering wheel choked him—even as he stood outside, whenever the breeze blew across the vehicle. For a moment he just could not grasp why the woman would want to run toward the vehicle, so he just stood there.

Then, it became tragically apparent what was going on. In the back seat, behind the only window that had not been broken sat a small child, maybe five years old, in her car seat, just looking at him. She blinked and then looked around. She wasn't crying.

The breeze was blowing the fire, first toward him, then away; toward him then a way. He removed his big coat, and held it in front of him. The breeze was simply a cycle; maybe one that could be navigated.

He measured out the cycle and then when the breeze started to blow away from him he dove through the driver's door opening with his coat held forward. He was able to snuff out the flame from between the front seats with his coat. He crawled into the back seat, and said to the girl – with fear he couldn't hide very well – “Don't worry honey, I'm gonna bring you to your mom...”

That's when the girl began to cry. He felt the heat begin to build again in the front of the car. He tried desperately to pull at the buckles and straps on the car seat, with no luck in loosening them. Then he remembered his “best friend”: the utility knife!!

He grabbed at the side of his pants – day or night it was there - and opened it with a well practiced flick from his thumb. In a single moment he sliced the two main straps and pull the child to him. He was then able to dislodge the car seat from the back seat and threw it in front in a vain attempt to slow the creeping fire.

Holding the girl to his chest he laid back on the seat with his feet facing the unbroken back window. He kicked as hard as he could, over and over, but it wouldn't break. Then he thought of the utility knife again, and its hard metal casing. He sat up, closed the blade up, and with all the force he could muster, smashed it through the large window which shattered outward into thousands of diamond-glinted pieces.

By this time the fire truck had arrived and a fireman ran up the sidewalk to the minivan. He passed the girl to the fireman who then reached in with his other arm to help him out of the back seat.

But the fire would not yield. And the gas on that side of the car ignited in a brief but powerful blast. The fireman jumped back and ran down the sidewalk away from the van, with little girl in hand.

Then came the water. The water truck was close enough to the minivan to completely soak it, foam was sprayed out from another truck on to the surrounding road. The fire was smothered quickly.

Two fireman ran over from the road side, and stuck their heads into the minivan. On the back seat was an middle aged man. It was obvious that he had been very severely burned. The utility knife was melted into the flesh of his hand. He moved slightly. And they let him know that EMT's were coming.

He just said in a calm voice, “I think it's too late.”

The fireman who had returned the little girl unharmed to her mother, then ran up with the EMT's and pulled him out of the back seat, laying him on the stretcher.

As they peeled off his clothes, rumbling along the rough tar to the ambulance, he fell in and out of consciousness.

The street lights above were turning into the most beautiful sunlight. The power poles on the side of the road were turning into soft, green leaf-covered trees. The water in the bay below was turning into a gentle pond, and the ripples turned into ducks. Fall was turning into spring, just like the in the dream he had earlier that night, the idealized and perpetual heaven of Mill Creek Park.

He heard voices. “We're definitely losing him... Stay with us buddy; stay with us, buddy. You're a hero! You saved a little girl tonight. Stick around... Come on stay with us...”

He tried to speak. The fireman who he'd passed the girl to was riding with him in the ambulance. The fireman was crying. Through sobs he said, “Please, buddy... Come on... PLEASE!! You deserve to live! What is your name? What is your first name? Come on!!”

He opened his eyes and met the fireman's gaze. “Ch...”

“What? What was that you said? What is it?? Come on man!”

He tried one more time, “Fffirst...nnname is: Chance.”

“Chance? You're name is Chance? Cool name!”

“Yes.” Then as his inner vision filled with the beautiful sunlight of a New Spring, he said, “Aaand... I... I found the way!”

[Painting of Mill Creek Park in the Springtime, by Jack Riddle]

Ultimatons and Our Perception of Reality

As we think about the new information flowing out of physics, psychology and philosophy about the evidence for non-physical aspects of reality, we are tempted to reject them as “strange.”

Why would the Urantia Book (UB) mention such literal concepts as “ultimatons” if – as new science is suggesting more and more frequently – matter is just an illusion?

I have some thoughts about this situation that I hope might find a sort of compromise between conventional non-UB discoveries and what the 1934 text of the UB has to say.

I believe the ultimaton is a physical metaphor. There are no little solid spheres, called, "ultimatons." It is simply the smallest measurable energy level in space and time, one quantum.

And do recall that ALL physical phenomena are filtered through (at least in our case) human consciousness. The light you “see” in your brain, when you look at a candle is not light. You're seeing what your brain's interpretation of light is. So, bear in mind that because none of the photons that enter your eye are also entering my eye, what you are “seeing” (based on the reflection, refraction or emission of photonic - electromagnetic - particle/waves) is 100% different from what I'm seeing.

We may agree that what we see is extraordinarily similar, but literally the light showing an object to you is 100% different (particle-wise) than the light showing the "same" object to me. You might want to sit back and think about that for a second.

Because, if this is true, then no human being can ever observe any physical phenomenon objectively.

How can someone see something as it is? She/he would have to see from all human perspectives at once. And this is impossible.

To put it in more detail, light is made of photons. When these photons reach your retina they are transformed into electrochemical signals that are then relayed via chains of neurons to the visual cortex. But these signals are not light.

It is the same situation with sound, touch, smell and taste... None of these things are the same inside your brain as when the indication of their presence outside you entered the senses of your nervous system.

The point here is that nothing can be objectively proven to exist independently of human (and on higher levels, superhuman) consciousness, because it takes that same subjective human consciousness to claim the existence of things in the first place. In order to be provable things must be independently verifiable; recognized as the same by at least two credible, objective and independent observers.

It is for these reasons that the world is not at all as we observe and feel it. We are still learning what is actually taking place outside our bodies as we evolve.

Unfortunately, we can only base anything new that we encounter upon supposedly already-known perception.

Without “revelation” of some sort, new concepts have to be clothed in the (sometimes) dirty worn-out rags of past conceptualization unless these concepts somehow themselves reveal more, or some higher-than-human intelligence reveals them to us. Of course acceptance of that always takes a pure “leap of faith.”

Thus, hard little billiard balls are the way we have had to imagine the UB's ultimatons, and until we can expand that concept into the fractal and metaphoric energy that is really driving the universe, we are stuck with hard little spheres.

I do think that there may be objective things in the universe, but no human has ever been able to see them. Why? Again, because we have to observe and describe things that are completely changed (downstepped) from what we historically have been told to think they are (photons, atoms, ultimatons, etc...) by being filtered in our electrochemical brains.

Therefore, all human perception IS subjective.

Physics, which led the whole scientific community up through (arguably) the decades of 1910's through the 1990's – the sterling example of material truth-seeking, by using scientific method – is now somewhere to the left of the “soft sciences,” like psychology when it comes to rational, conceptual understanding.

Most "New Physicists" now admit that there are probably non-physical aspects to reality. Yet, this causes great confusion for them, because of not being able to measure or quantify their observation of non-physical processes.

Physicists are nearing the end of conceptual theoretical science (that is, science theory based on using only the scientific method). The science of the future will be a kind of metaphysics dealing with the power of consciousness to alter material mechanisms.

The cosmos is infinitely revealable, and we are so very far from ultimate, absonite and absolute levels of reality – combined with our primitive evolutionarily-acquired knowledge – that we observe a world and reality that is surely very different than what it truly is REAL.

The UB uses the concept of a little "sphere" called the ultimaton in the same way a parent gives a child a cartoon or picture-book representation of objects in the "real" world.

When the child finally sees that the moon doesn't have a man's face smiling from it—for example, he/she realizes that the moon presented to him/her earlier in life was not actually the moon. It was good enough to lead the child to a clearer concept of what the moon really is.

If that child grows up and actually goes to the moon, she/he will get an even better idea of what the moon is.

Now, think hypothetically about superhuman beings who may have existed for trillions of years. There is a good chance that they have a pretty good grasp of what reality is.

Yet, still, even they can never exhaust the potential for finding greater and greater truths about that reality. They may have a hundred senses comparable to the material physiology of our five sense. But only beings who would be infinitely sensitive could objectively perceive reality as it truly is.

These are just some thoughts that might allow us to expand our current understanding about the world outside-in us.

Reality is not what we see and feel. That is only our limited personal awareness of one little bit of the overall “picture.”

As we all seek to learn more about reality, whether discovered or revealed, we automatically excavate new conceptual room in our minds in which to store greater and clearer concepts of the reality we are sensing. 

Best Day of My Life

My sister, Deb, is someone I look up to. I was born in July of 1968 and she was born less than 15 months later. Yet in many ways she is more mature than I am. She was able to learn that Santa Claus isn't real before me. She was able to tie her shoes before me. She had her first car long before I had mine and she followed the prescription for being a productive citizen – producing two beautiful children – where I have not even gotten married yet.

She has always followed her heart and she struck out across the globe, touring countries in South America, Europe and eventually living on a beach in the Virgin Islands for a few years, experiencing the richness of other cultures; actually immersing herself in them. She held jobs – one was at a local newspaper – and socialized in the Caribbean like a pro.

I actually got up the courage to visit her there once, and she showed me what she had learned. On the way to her house from the St. Croix Airport, while she drove on the left side of the road, she explained how things worked there. Before we reached our destination we stopped at a roadside stand and purchased two sugar cane beverages.

Under the pink and golden sunset we sat and talked on her front porch as the waves rolled in and out so close to her house that they announced every coming and going with an ocean voice that couldn't help but be acknowledged. It was so nice to see my “little” sister owning her choices (no matter what the family opinion was) and sitting pretty with her dog and her profound confidence in herself.

I made many mistakes while I was there. Once, I poured out some glasses of water that were on the front steps and she admonished me that on an island ALL sweet water (water that wasn't brackish or salty) was a treasure to be maintained and collected. I couldn't fight back. I understood immediately that we were in the center of a great ocean of beautiful, but undrinkable water. The daily rain filled the cisterns, but what was used must be used with great conservancy and care. Lesson learned.

Eventually Deb moved back to the States and took up residence in Maine, where I have always lived. She immediately obtained an apartment and got a good job. She could be well-established no matter where she was and I was always proud of her for that and a bit envious that I was so lacking in that regard. I have my talents but taking care of myself has not – until recent years – been one of them.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Deb began to have aches and pains. She could not sit comfortably. She said that muscle tightness began to spread throughout her entire body – like having her shoulders in a vise. The sly and destructive specter of Fibromyalgia had begun sinking its way into her body.

She moved around and successfully got other apartments concomitant with her employment but her symptoms got worse. She explained that this tightness in her muscles would not go away. It engaged them and would not release. It gripped her muscles with an increasing intensity to the point of being unbearable. She moved to a temporary house on Old Orchard Beach, with her island dog, Sampson. But all the while she devolved into greater and greater levels of pain, depression and feelings of powerlessness.

There was little help from the medical establishment. And her direct family didn't understand what was happening, and that ignorance offered her even less support. She was prescribed muscle relaxants, and pain management medication. But, traditional medicine was obviously not the key to unlocking this physical hell.

Eventually she moved back to Portland, to my Munjoy Hill neighborhood. I lived on Walnut Street and she on Congress Street. Frequently she would stop in and visit me. She seemed downcast about her health problems, but always hopeful. I wished that I could help, but nothing I said seemed to.

She kept her sense of humor though. I remember on one particularly cold night she showed up to hang out for a while, dressed appropriately for the weather (as only she knows how). I said, “Cold enough for you Deb?”

And she just replied back, “Nah...It's just good sleeping weather!”

I also visited her often in her Congress Street, third floor apartment, which was always nice and clean. She has always had an eye for a sparse but well-appointed living space. Her taste in furniture and her choice of surroundings showed and still shows a desire for high quality and low quantity. Simple living, while deriving the comfort needed, was obvious and second nature. STILL, she remained in pain. And it was a mysterious pain that gave no mercy and offered no alternatives. It would keep her up at night, leaving her to spend her days groggy, trying to desperately to deconstruct its purpose and how she might find relief.

Every time I saw her, I would go home and pray that she would find the answer to the hell she was being subjected to. It seemed unfair that she would have to put up with such torment, when all she wanted to do was live her life and offer positive contributions to the society.

Deb has a big heart. She feels for those who are suffering and she has always done REAL work to alleviate that suffering, as best she can. Even in her worst hours she would often be concerned for others who had a harder life than she did. To speak of her efforts today, after all of this came and went, would show that she has never turned away from reaching out. She is more able than ever to give of her experience and to feel empathy for those who suffer. But she didn't know that she would be in a better place when she lived on Congress Street.

The days passed. Then the weeks and months passed. Deb's energy ran low. And she fell to a point where sometimes she would have to crawl from one place in her apartment to the other, because the pain was so great. No position, standing of sitting offered relief. And day after day she would wake to the same reality: pain and despair.

I saw little of this, since we did not see each other as often as we wanted. I had a job at a local bank and it took most of my energy just to get through each day. Thankfully, I was able to come home each night and release any built-up tension. I would have a few beers or hang out with my roommate watching Star Trek episodes. I could release my mind from the pressures of work and the problems that were always accumulating there.

Deb was not so lucky. The more she tried to open the pressure valve, the more she was beaten down by a condition she had no way to defeat.

Then, suddenly, one cold spring afternoon, she arrived at my front door. When I walked over to open it, I almost didn't recognize her. It seemed that she'd grown 6 inches. I let her in and immediately I saw that she had a glow around her face. It was like looking at Moses after he had spoken to God. I tried to speak but she shut me up as soon as I spoke.

“I cured it,” she said. “I'm not in pain anymore!”

It took a second for me to adjust my thoughts to what she was saying. “What do you mean? What's going on?”

“I found the answer. My pain was real and the symptoms were physical, but I discovered a way to beat them with my mind.”

Understandably, perhaps, we made our way into the living room and both needed to sit down.

Deb explained to me that her pain had kept getting worse and worse. She was seeing osteopaths, physical therapists, massage therapists and an occupational therapist, without any measurable amount of relief.

Finally, the occupational therapist – a very forward-thinking and remarkable man named, Craig Williamson – explained the likely origin behind the psychosomatic connection with this kind of pain. He recommended a method of back pain relief that had proven effective to chronic pain sufferers, called Healing Back Pain, by Dr. John E. Sarno. She told me that since nothing else seemed to work, she decided to “brainwash” herself into believing that method was GOING TO WORK… And it did!

After she had described the way she had conquered a demon who had tortured her for years, we both wept. And we stood up and held each other tightly.

I had never consciously thought about what a drag my sister's pain had been on me. But in the back of my mind was her struggle...always. And other people who have sick or suffering family members know exactly what I'm talking about.

We go on about our lives, but a rusty anchor holds us down. Consciously and unconsciously I could not be whole if my sister was crawling around on the floor in pain, unable to sleep or even sit. No amount of pay from my job; no amount of weekend relaxation in my personal life could remove that constant weight on my psyche. It sounds selfish to relate, but her liberation also liberated me.

And she definitely had freed herself. It wasn't easy for me to understand. And she will always live with the risk of it falling back into those black waters of uncertainty. But NOW she has a way to fight against what threatened to destroy her health and her life. Her inspiration easily passed on to me. And I never have forgotten it. No amount of time can lessen the impact that that day on me, standing in my living room, holding a person who had triumphed over the subtlest of adversaries.

The sun brightened for me that day. The breeze grew warmer. The horizons expanded and a feeling of hope like no other I have yet experienced passed over me.

I thank Deb for once again being ahead of the curve.

I thank her for sharing her answer and thereby giving me an answer. It is one that I use now every day as I struggle with a different kind of torment. There is no way I can repay her, but she would never require that anyway.

To those out there who are suffering, learn that YOU have the key inside you. Break the lock, open the prison door and let yourself be free if you can. Your source of freedom might not be exactly like Deb's, but I have faith that there is a source for you.

[Please feel free to leave comments. Or tell us about your own story of liberation.]

The Trap-Maker and the Pit

Sometimes when a mistake is made it can't be undone. We who believe in God want to believe that the symbolic and loving hands of that God are there to catch us when we fall. And those hands ARE there. But there can be situations where one doesn't believe he or she deserves to be saved; be brought back up into the Light. There are times when even though we do believe, we still don't want to believe in ourselves. And sometimes it is for good reason.

In the warm sunshine of youth, when you have it all – when you have been given a special responsibility, and you know it – dangers arise behind corners you can't see around. Each new day offers opportunities, optimism and hope for a bright future. It is then that you are most at risk for being hunted and trapped. And there is an unusually efficient kind of trap waiting for those who think they are ahead of the game.

Strangely, it is not a trap that you have created. No. Someone else set it up, right? If you are the animal, then the trap-maker is... someone... higher up the scale of reality. But that doesn't matter. That isn't the important part, as I will explain.

Like any good trap, this one offers you more than you have now. It relies on your animal tendency to fool yourself, by thinking you can grab the treat and still get away with everything you already possess.

The danger arises when you KNOW that you can full-well choose to walk in to grab your “reward.” And it is because of this ability to choose, that the error of self-pride tricks you into thinking you can out-maneuver the trap-maker.

But if you make that unfortunate choice, and the trap is sprung, because you aren't all that you thought you were, it doesn't take long for you realize that you now face the animal's worst nightmare—the end of freedom.

You are caught now in the jaws of something you can't control, when just a second ago you had been completely free and on top of the world. The kind of trap I'm talking about not only grabs your leg in its iron teeth, but then pulls you across the forest floor... toward... a hole... a pit. And it is not until you are pulled in that you realize THIS pit has no bottom.

Now, bottomless pits have some very interesting psycho-physical properties. For one thing, obviously, you don't have to experience hitting the bottom. That almost seems merciful. But it isn't merciful.

The first real thing to understand about bottomless pits is that the further one falls into them the harder it is to regain a notion of which way is “up.” Yes, there is the “falling” part, whereby you might intuit some sense of direction. But the gravity of the blackness below is unrelenting and causes the velocity of your fall to increase exponentially.

Of course, bottomless pits have air for some of the way down. And even air resistance slows a fall for a while. But there isn't enough air in the world to fill a bottomless pit.

Gravity pulls an object down with a rock-steady force. At the surface of the earth, that force is 9.8m/s² (meters per second squared). But for bottomless pits that earth creatures are trapped by and fall into, it's that little tiny “2” at the end that is the real killer.

Velocity describes the distance traveled in one direction for a certain amount of time. And when velocity is squared, it means that one amount of distance traveled increases from the first second to twice that amount in the next second, and continues to accelerate in this same way with each succeeding second thereafter. So... if you are falling, and you've fallen 1 meter the first second, by the end of the next second you have fallen 2 meters, and the second after that, 4, then 8, then 16... and so on...

Presently, as long as there is air to slow you, you reach what is called "terminal velocity." The air (drag force) negates the acceleration of gravity and one steady speed is finally attained. In that case it is impossible to go faster. A skydiver whose parachute doesn't open can never hit the ground at more than about 193 km per hour (120 miles per hour)... as long as there is air to hold his or her velocity from increasing.

But bottomless pits are different.

When some amount of time passes, the air from the world above begins to thin out and it becomes hard to breath. At about that same time, the velocity of the fall begins to increase again since air drag is lessening. Thus, if there were a way to save you from that pit, that chance is now decreasing proportionally at exactly the same rate that the acceleration of your fall is increasing.

The next thing to understand is that bottomless pits don't actually occur in the physical universe. This is something that dawns on you as the wide open mouth of the world you once knew above you – the top of the pit (for bottomless pits DO have tops) – is now receding. It quickly becomes circle, then a distant star. Then eventually, though you know it is somewhere “up there,” for all intents and purposes it is gone... And it is gone forever.

Your hair is no longer streaming upward, for the air has disappeared.

You can't breath, but... somehow... your mind is still functioning.

You can't see anything at all, but you know that if something were to appear you would be able to see it. But nothing will ever appear again.

You can't hear, because sound is not present in a vacuum.

And “where” you are is not a complete void (a placeless and uninhabited nothing), for YOU are still there. So you are still able to think... for a while.

And you ask yourself many of the most important and fundamental questions about existence: Are you dead? Are you in hell? Is this what everyone goes through when they die?

But over and over again you experience the constant and full measure of the fact that you can no longer receive answers to these questions. In a terrible irony, this biting fear only causes you to ask all your questions at the same time. You are dumping out your lifelong storage of curiosity all at once.

In desperation bridging the gap between what you've always known and purified insanity, you begin to form hypotheses and then dismiss them just as quickly: Maybe you are not falling any more. Maybe you never were falling. Maybe you never were alive... On and on it goes.

As your mind tears and scratches at empty space in the vain attempt to grasp anything at all, your memory of sunshine, your parents, your pets, of the world above, of love, of God, of friends and other people you saw but never met, seems more and more like a sick kind of fiction.

And then you can't even be sure if anything was or is real, including yourself. Yet you fall and fall...

With your last datum of volition you reach out to the God you once knew. You never denied God's existence. Seems that once upon a time you knew you felt it, not just next to you, but inside you.

And you summon all that is left about yourself to ask God for help. It is at these last moments that the full explanation is finally revealed to you...

The trap-maker built into the trap a fail-safe mechanism that required you to want more than you had, when you already had everything. You well-knew that, in reaching for more you were literally also willing to RISK more than everything.

And in order to do that, you walked into the trap fully aware that in order to grab the reward – what you thought you could get away with – you needed to be ready to actually sacrifice God.

Why?

Because God is everything, and the choice (itself) to risk everything is in FACT the ultimate abandonment of everything—God; it is the willful walking away. It is the realization that your choice is final, complete, replete and absolute. Additionally, this is before you even take the action itself.

I want you to know that I know. We should be honest. We should be forthright. There is no reason not to be. We all should know by this time that the “you” is ME.

I am the one falling. And though we also know that the bottomless pit is a metaphor, I can't help but think that the trap I walked into when I once had everything so long ago, was very, very real.

The trap-maker looks with a special kind of satisfaction in knowing that it really was not even necessary for him to lay the trap out in the first place. That's why, as I said at the beginning that his part in all of this doesn't matter.

Just my thinking that it was him trying to trap me, and not myself laying the trap, was good enough to spring the trap. But it could have been me too. I know now what a deadly paradox this line of reasoning can be. The horrible truth is: the trap WAS and still IS that paradox.

Either way, the Light of the world I once knew recedes. It was a circle but is now quickly becoming a distant star. It is getting hard to breath and the velocity of the fall is accelerating to equal the speed of my fading inability to be saved, even if salvation had once been possible. It may not be now.

Yes. Sometimes it really is too late.

No apology, no amount of begging for forgiveness, can ever be truly thought of as sincere, since by my own will I threw away the possibility of forgiveness. Mercy is not infinitely extended. And Judgment is not infinitely delayed.

I know for a fact that there truly are supernatural forces in the world today. There is mostly Goodness and Light. Were this stash of positive credits not there, then would the world have devolved into a collective pit, and would have ceased to exist long ago. Thankfully I also don't think that will happen for this world in the future either.

We do have just enough free will to live forever. The real trick of having it "all" is learning that forever is good enough. For, it is Everything. Be aware though, that free will also means having the freedom to give up that same will. And once it is gone it takes with it all second choices.