Welcome To My Nightmare

I grew up very privileged in the 1960s; not monetarily, mind you, but rather, emotionally. My mother died two months ago at 94, my father died a few years prior at 92; they were married for over 70 years. I never saw them raise their voice to one another, never. I can recall on one hand the times I saw my mother mad at my father. They were a bubble of love and light and as their youngest, they had it perfected by the time I came long.

Ozzie and Harriet, June and Ward Cleaver. I lived in one of those types of TV families. And it fucked me up bad. It in no way prepared me for the real world. It left me naïve in the ways of love and life and that hurt me more than anything in the years that followed. My reason for starting out by sharing this is because I want you to know that I am not dealing with some great dark episode that scarred me for life; for the most part, I am not a broken man.

When I look for the dark to overcome, I find little.

But I longed for love.

I was too naïve to understand it.

I was too fearful of losing it when it was found.

It was the early 1970s when I began to self-medicate. Beer. Pot. Speed. Mushrooms. LSD. Food.

I noticed that when I did the LSD that I was able to tackle personal problems more efficiently afterwards. Then I realized through the chemical, I was able to step outside of my life and look at whatever my current situation was, from a new perspective. I began to use LSD whenever I had a "big" decision to make. Well, they seemed big at the time; I can't remember what any of them were anymore.

I didn't know why it was working, but I don't think I really cared to know. In the 1980s I did est, the Erhard Seminars Training, assisting at est trainings and eventually doing the est "Six-Day Course" in Northern California. For a while, est worked for me, but like the LSD before it, I didn't really know why it was working.

In the 1990s I did the Forum, the program est had evolved into by then. Like est before, it worked for a while. In the 2000s I was a part of the burgeoning Men's Group movement. I also started about 10 year's of therapy beginning in the mid 1990s.

My point is, I have been searching for a very long time, but not to wipe away some great dark event from my past. Thanks to the love and the incredible heart of an amazing woman, I have dealt with much of my issues with love, so I no longer seek those answers.

As one ages, one searches for meaning. I search for meaning.

A little over a year ago we discovered ayahuasca, the true power of the sacred plants, the true nature of reality and how I had been covering up the truth I learned when I was fourteen.