In the last two years the presence of the entity I have named, "the Spark" seems to have filled the warm body void. It isn't next to me. It is inside me. But the touch of another human being has an energy that is indefinable, yet tangible. There aren't many things in life we can call both indefinable AND tangible. The Spark knows intellectually that, indeed, "no man is an island". But, I know it emotionally. If there is one social thing that I could wish for after these Journeys are over, it would be a life partner--a woman I could grow old with. But, as they say, "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride." I have to go through a bit more time wallking as a beggar, before I receive my horse to ride.
When I was a little kid, I often used my imagination to play alone. I never had invisible friends. I wished so much sometimes that I did. A few of my flesh and blood friends did. Instead of seeing invisible playmates, I would speak the parts of the characters in my fictional adventures. I never thought the characters were real. That would have defeated my having absolute control over everything in the story. Yes, I was a control freak even back then--though, my control was usually limited to the perimeter of my own personal space.
My made-up stories weren't just tales, they were movies! Seeing Star Wars instantly turned me into a movie director. After seeing that film, instead of just storylines, I would have movie sets, camera angles, special effects, and props.
Since Mattel didn't make asteroids for my spaceships to fly through, I made my own. Thankfully, my dad had plenty of junk around the yard for me to turn into space-based props. I found styrofoam and used my soldering iron to melt holes in it... Boom! Instant asteroid! (Really looked like one too.) Parents today would be appalled by the things I used to have at my disposal.
I had an old chemistry set with burn holes on the outside; picked from the Yarmouth town dump--probably cast there by an angry father when his child injured himself. I remember that it had mercury (among some of the other pure elements each in its own little bottle), which my friends and I played with, rolling it around on different surfaces. Of course we always lost a few drops in the corner of the room, but we didn't know any better.
Most significantly though, it had a biological section with a microscope, dyes, and glass slides. I found dead flies and examined their wings and multi-lens eyes under the microscope. I found leaves, stained and mounted bits of them on slides and for the first time saw plant cells that weren't just in a text book. Developing a love for biology led me to long walks in the woods around Bayview Street in Yarmouth (where I grew up).
There were skunks and porcupines, squirrels, chipmunks, tons of birds, lizards, frogs, worms, insects and spiders. The astounding variety of nature's living creatures made a huge impact on my young mind. Of course there were also plants to learn the names of. I watched them come to life in the spring, flourish in the summer, go to seed in the autumn and die in the winter--only to live again the next spring. I liked the solitude of my nature walks. I could do more thinking if I wasn't expected to do a lot of talking.
Having said that, I had some very close childhood friends. We were fortunate to live in a neighborhood with kids my age all over the place. And, unlike today, where children are (I think) a bit overprotected, we kids were allowed to have whole days to ourselves. We spent them making trails, exploring the Bayview peninsula, and set up dozens of mini campsites; stealing matches and bologna, then cooking it over well-maintained little fires.
There wasn't as much to do indoors as there is today. We were fortunate to grow up at a time just before computers and communication devices became widespread. Cable TV was the first trap, then came video games like Atari. But I was already in high school by the time personal computers began to arrive in households. And, though there were rudimentary forms of internet-like communications by the time I left for college, I never really had access to them.
Although I loved to draw, my interest in science really took off after about the age of eight years old. My mom bought me a subscription to OMNI Magazine. It was simply the best magazine I've ever received. Each month would be cosmology, biology, parapsychology, drug development, fantasy and some other very adult subjects, along with the high quality space-based science fiction short stories I loved so much. Reading OMNI and spending a lot of time by myself thinking about the concepts therein, set up a permanent enjoyment for reading, and simply thinking (what would later turn into a kind of "meditating").
The ages between eight and ten would solidify my passion for learning. And, I genuinely credit my mother for fostering this in me. I wasn't a kid who asked for much, so when I asked for things like the subscription to OMNI, mom didn't give it a second thought. I truly - even to this day - appreciate that she knew I was mentally mature enough to handle these things. She also saw fit to supply me with plenty of art materials for drawing, and then painting. She encouraged me to write. And, I think she might still have a few of my first poems and short stories packed away somewhere.
Those were my happy years. I drank in as much as I could about the world around me and didn't have many worries--besides recurring dreams that my mom might die; a pretty obvious symbol that she was my anchor. In the years to come, all of that would change rather significantly.
As I approached adolescence, a dark force entered my life. I essentially became a physical and psychological slave. Being forced into labor and controlled by fear, I grew up much faster than my friends did. I didn't let on to this when with them very often, as I wanted to appear to be like everyone else. But I wasn't like everyone else. The struggle between wanting to fit in and knowing I never could pounded my psyche. I was simply too young and had too little experience to realize that there were ways to climb out of the pit of despair that I suddenly found myself subjected to by the other of my closest relatives. I scratched at the walls of this pit, looking for a way up to the light. But, all that would result was further collapsing of those walls--cave in after cave in.
The damage done during the years between about ten and sixteen was irreparable. There was no escape and I developed coping mechanisms that lasted well into the three decades leading up to my current projects. I'm not going to discuss the negative events of these long and disturbing years today. They must await a future time when I'm more settled. I will say however, the things that I experienced at the time hardened me; convinced me that I only had loyal friends or destructive enemies. I've found it difficult to trust anyone since. And, I developed an unfortunate tendency to want to utterly remove people who I felt betrayed me from my universe. In recent years, I have been striving to go back and find peace with these teenage years. Yet, it is a work in progress--a work that might never be completed, at least in this world.
On the positive side, the need to escape what was becoming a nightmare in the outside world, led me to the sanctuary of the inside world. Thankfully, I had the fortitude to endure an abuse foisted upon me privately, while remaining a social creature, to some extent. I never became a recluse or an incurable introvert. But, I did use my very precious free time at home to intensely study the BIG questions in life. What was the universe? Who was God? Why did people believe things so strongly that they would go to war or allow themselves to be killed over them? What could nature tell me about the fundamentals of cosmic reality? What secrets were contained in the "magic"--white and black?
When I "graduated" from church school, I received a Bible of my very own. Being an inquisitive kid, I wanted to learn more about this character named, Jesus. So at nights I read through the New Testament, several times. It became obvious to me that Jesus, the man, was an extraordinarily strong, but compassionate person. The biggest impression on me (at that time) about him and what he did, was that he willingly went to the cross FOR his friends, and that this act would by default be a gift of selfless teaching for the whole world, if they would only see it in that way.
Instead, I noticed that the world did NOT see it that way. There were strict rules in place for Christians, laid down by the church that clothed itself in his name; things to which Jesus himself would never have consented. Modern day Christianity was not about the love of friendship. It was about the maintenance of power over people (even over their eternal lives!), through the judgement of self-appointed HUMAN beings--in the form of ministers and priests.
I well-knew the history of the Crusades during the so-called Middle Ages. There were lots of PBS documentaries on Channel 10. I knew that women like Joan of Arc were burned at the stake for any number of unjust charges. Even in this country, the religious "authorities" showed their insanity during the Salem Witch Trials which were still a popular story in grade school.
In fact, I saw how women in general paid most of the price for the expansion of Christian "values", as society had come out of World War II, wanting working fathers and housewife mothers.
The "Women's Liberation" movement of the 1970's and the subsequent failure to pass the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment)...
Congress had set a ratification deadline of March 22, 1979. Through 1977, the amendment received 35 of the necessary 38 state ratifications. Five states later rescinded their ratifications before the 1979 deadline. In 1978, a joint resolution of Congress extended the ratification deadline to June 30, 1982, but no further states ratified the amendment and it died. [Wikipedia]...signified to me - even being told very little about it at the time by my parents - that injustice was simply something that people had to live with--especially women and minorities. The leaders of the world were well-entrenched in their office chair thrones and nothing anybody did could unseat them.
I distinctly remember watching the CBS Evening News (hosted by the great Walter Cronkite) with my parents during that ERA time. My mother occasionally agreed that women needed a stronger voice in society. But my dad - a devout Nixonian Republican - simply teased her about being a "Women's Libber". When my sister would do something really cool, he would say, "Not bad...for a girl."
One day I went down into the cellar where his office was, and drew a big moustache on his poster of Richard Nixon, just for the hell of it. My dad ruled the house with fear and willful ignorance, in the same way that Nixon ruled our country. The legacy of Nixon's extreme social control are still with us, as I have written about at this blog, in the form of a "Drug War" and Fiat Currency. And, my dad's iron fist is still banging on the walls of my memory.
After reading the Bible, but rejecting the church (I was raised a Congregationalist--which is one of the more liberal denominations of Christianity), I set out on a search into all the things NON-Christian. I wanted to learn about what true evil was--aside from any definition given to personal behavior by church leaders. I devoured dozens of books on the Occult, seeking out the rarest in any library I could find them. The school library was surprisingly well stocked with such books. But the Yarmouth Public Library has some very old ones. That is where I found a few that actually gave spells, translations of angelic script, and the sigils used in various rites and rituals.
At this point I should say that I fully believed in my own form of a personal God. I felt the presence of a Creator from my earliest memories. I was not in search of a way to kill God. I was in search of a way to understand God, aside from what everyone else was teaching and learning. I never had to be told by my parents that there was a Universal Parent. No one ever had to convince me of the existence of a Prime Mover. I simply KNEW it, and I have never questioned it.
Inevitably, my interest in so-called "magic" led me to perform some private rituals on my own. During a few of them, I was quite impressed with the results. I didn't know if these results were simply originating in my own mind or not, but I knew for sure that if they were, they could theoretically also be psychically transferred to others--through the power of suggestion. Yet, I sought a spiritual power over my own life (not over other people), because I had no power over it through the nightmare of servitude in which I found myself.
As my mind began to fill with knowledge about "the other side" a nagging question kept poking at me: IF there was a devil, and God so apparently existed, and was a benevolent Person--to me there was no question, then what happened to make the devil (and his associates) rebel? With all of my studies - all of the books I was reading--even works geared toward the Satanic practices - I could not find a satisfactory answer. There was only one source I knew of that could provide what I was looking for.
During these last two Journeys I have mentioned that I share a "Cosmic Philosophy" with some of the people I have visited around the country and who read this very blog. The source I refer to IS that philosophy. I'm not going to name it specifically, because I don't want it to be a centerpiece for what I do. It is NOT the centerpiece. It does NOT rule my project, nor would I ever want to be seen as promoting it, as itself. Although it still has great influence over my thinking, I am not happy with the direction the majority of its students have taken. And, I refuse to be one of them. It should not be hard for the reader to discover to what I refer. Many already know. Nevertheless, it does play a role in this narrative.
This source had been in my family - through my father's mother - since before I was born. It sat on the coffee table of our home, though it was rarely opened. I had been told that it was complicated and complex; very hard to understand--but REAL. I knew from my grandmother (who would become my mentor in this regard) that it explained much about the Creator, and I knew it also contained information about "The War in Heaven".
So...I opened it.
Therein, I found the answers about the devil's discontent which I sought. It filled in the mystery I had been stumbling over for so long. After reading the sections I was most interested in (several dozen times), I SAW why the world is as it is, and why it was not what it should be. At the same time, the concept of the Spark appeared, yet-unnamed.
Now fully armed with the (apparently) secret knowledge necessary, I formulated a plan to climb out of my personal family-created pit. But, in the process, I also unwittingly produced a situation in my life that would lead me toward an even darker, pitch-black and potentially bottomless pit. If I was not exceedingly careful, and couldn't keep a well-balanced view of my own ego, life expectations and desires, I could become trapped and slip into this hole. I knew for certain that there would be no return if I was unwise enough to overstep my bounds. I was now in possession of a power I had little idea how to handle. It was SUCH a profound realization, that it frightened the hell out of me, and would take me all the way until my freshman year in college to work up the courage to test this power.
Finally, I had found something even stranger than the most imaginative fiction I had read. But this wasn't fiction. This was more real than anything I'd ever known.
When I complete the final Journey (which starts tomorrow--December 22), I will write a long-overdue essay on that summer solstice which will finish the story above; bringing it into public view, once and for all. I took on a great and terrible burden during that first year of college. It has controlled and steered my life, despite all of my attempts to loosen it from my soul ever since. I made a mistake that was destructive beyond my ability to describe. I had been trapped--and for once, it wasn't my own trap, but one designed by "someone" else. I WILL try to explain it on that first day of summer next year.
What does all of this have to do with IWALLK?
Quite a lot, actually. It was the reason for the crumbling waste of a life that I wallowed in before leaving Maine in October of 2014. I had reached the edge of the pit. The trap-maker had essentially won. I was feeling that it would be best for the world that I simply waved goodbye and tipped backward into the void. I was not prepared for the unknown but parallel plan that the Spark had been patiently designing for me; one of deliverance.
It had been training me for what I'm doing now--physically, mentally, psychologically, and emotionally. The small fragment of Light that penetrated the gloom of what seemed to be an inevitable and irreversible plunge into non-existence, offered a way up and out. But it would take an enormous amount of work--more work than I'd done in all of my life before that point put together. It would involve giving up my fondest material dreams. It would require great discomfort and even worse financial uncertainty than I had ever known.
It was the Journeys Project. I didn't want to do it. I fought tooth and nail to find a way out of it; coming up with all kinds of business schemes and pulling out all the stops to avoid it. Thence, failing at each.
The day came when I would have to choose between the way of the pit and what I would grow to know as the way of the Spark. I didn't want to die--especially, forever. And, I suppose, I had just enough ambition left in me to imagine that I might still be able to save myself. It WAS worth one LAST chance. And, my dear readers, I think I made the right choice this time. I even dare to hope this project will give me a second chance to find personal love again--that warm body; that human touch.
The fate of my soul was uncertain (to me), right up until that first full day in Boston's North Station. It was only when I made the WILL-decision that I've spoken about so many times--and have encouraged in others since then, burst through those double doors out into the rainy city and then headed southward, that my salvation became pure and clear to me...
That is when the Spark turned on my Light!
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