04-14-2009, 10:35 PM
Perhaps three years ago, I was told by Barbara Brodsky (a particularly talented Dharma teacher and, I’m told, a friend of Carla’s) that I was a wanderer. Pleiadian. I didn’t have to walk all the way through the door, she said, before she recognized that fact. “It’s obvious,” she said. “It jumps right out at you.” (Clearly, the woman sees more deeply than I). Later, Aaron, a being she channels, clarified that I have had less than half a dozen human lifetimes. All of them “difficult.” The most recent one was more than a thousand years ago.
Where I come from, according to Aaron, I’m considered to be a wise being. “A fact you may find hard to believe,” quoth Aaron, and yes indeed that’s true.
I’m just now finishing the first of the “Law of One” books. The thing that struck me the strongest up to now is Ra’s name for us wanderers: “Brothers and Sisters of Sorrow.” I latch onto that name and hold it close. It feels right. Though perhaps I don’t even know what it means.
Like many who write here, I never felt as though I fit in. I didn’t fit in with my family of origin, or in any other group of which I’ve been a part. My first conscious thought, when I was a child and finding myself in a body surrounded by other bodies, was something like “Oh no, not again.” When I would find the world to be less than I expected, I would often hold my breath until I passed out. Even when I was three years old, there were times when my basic attitude was, “If this is all you’re offering, I don’t want to play.” I ended up being somewhat traumatized by the whole childhood experience. (My sister, a very wise woman, came out of childhood feeling fine and good; this was just me, being oversensitive).
I am not good at physical reality. I do not enjoy it. I, like so many of you have written, am very sensitive, almost allergic, to the world. It is too bright and too noisy and too chaotic. My body weakens immediately and catastrophically when I get even the smallest scent of petroleum products, especially scented oils. Tar, perfume, some deodorants, scented candles: deadly.
And these bodies! They are so dense. They take so much care and attention.
And being amongst other humans. Wow. I am easily overcome when I’m around too many people. (More than one is too many). I like people, and I like interacting with them, but it’s very difficult work. I often feel as though I’m trapped in a big iron box. The only way I have of communicating with others is to tap out messages in Morse code. They tap out some Morse code in answer. Neither of us can hear all that well, and neither of us has much mastery with Morse code.
Right at this moment, though, I come to you with a bit of a new beginning. My wife of a few years, a couple of months ago, invited me out of her life. That, mostly, is a good thing. It’s very easy for me to get lost in relationships. Especially that relationship, where I was busy loving her as much as I could, while trying to survive living in a small house with too many beings: her and her teenage children. (No, it makes no sense that I consciously chose such an environment to exist within). The person who was my wife is very physical. She lives fully within her body, and savors all of the pleasures that bodies bring. I, mostly, live in my head, or even a good couple of feet above my head, attempting I suppose to find some etheric plane that feels safer and more comfortable. We lived, then, in entirely different realities. No surprise that we didn’t very easily connect. I was living our marriage as an abiding spiritual bond, while she was living it as an unsatisfying, unconnected, not-exactly relational bond. She wanted passion, in all the ways that humans can be passionate. My best times weren’t the overstimulating moments of passion, but the quiet walks we took in the forest, or the neighborhood, or even the mall ferchrissakes, holding hands and sharing our thoughts and experiences. For me, those were the few times I was able to stop being self-conscious about being an over-large, clumsy organism lumbering through the world. For me, those were the times of true intimacy.
Anyway, now I am living thankfully alone once again, though I seem to have lost the knack of living alone without feeling lonely. I tend to have few friends, and she was it for a lot of years. Her absence is well noted. But truly, I was lonely when we were together, mostly, and actually I’ve been lonely most of my life. Lonely, with few skills toward connection.
As a part of this new beginning, I’m trying to reconnect with myself. I’m reading the Ra Material. I’m reading the Greater Community Spirituality books. I’m getting back into meditation. I’m once again following my interests and trying to find a space within me from which I can act upon the world. In other words, I’m trying once again to take my life seriously, instead of merely taking a role in someone else’s life. I believe that there is something I’m supposed to do here on the planet. Unfortunately, I don’t have a clue what that might be.
I guess I’ve always had a sense that I was supposed to be some sort of teacher. I did the logical thing, then, when I was a young man, and became a public school teacher. Public schools, though, are terribly unhealthy places. As everyone knows, they suck every bit of life out of people, teachers no less than students. So I quit teaching after a few years, and went to grad school. Being a slow learner, I undertook to become a professor of education. I thought I would see if I couldn’t change in some small way the nature of schools. But of course I just became a larger cog in the machinery of schooling that I found to be so damaging to people. So I left that arena after a few years as well. Perhaps I am supposed to be a teacher, but right now I have absolutely nothing to teach.
Something within me thinks that my role has something to do with communication, though I don’t communicate well, or often. I remember laying in bed when I was young (I don’t remember how old I was, but I remember which house I was in, so it must have been younger than 11 years) trying to figure out how one might write a book that aliens would be able to understand. This wasn’t something I was planning to do; it was more of a thought experiment: even if these aliens learned our language, I noted how much of our writing—and communication generally—was dependent upon cultural knowledge. Shouldn’t there be something that was more universal than our tiny human ways of describing experience? I didn’t know what that might be at the time. I still don’t, but I’m closer.
Right now, I work in printing. It’s one in a longish line of crazy jobs I’ve held trying to survive in this crazy place…though all the while unsure that I really want to survive. Sometimes, I still find myself holding my breath….
I’ve killed myself before, I sense, as a way out of this human world. I understand how that might have happened. It’s easy to start feeling isolated and alienated and compressed here. But I’m determined not to leave that way this time. Now that I have a lot of time alone, I am once again starting to sense my feelings stirring within me. I could never do that when I was married…one doesn’t easily create a space for the subtle aspects of feelings when one is in survival mode. My feelings are often centered on pain and sadness and sometimes even hopelessness, but there are glimpses of joy, occasionally, too. And freedom. When I think to notice, I find a good deal of beauty in the world. The people I work with sometimes find me crying, but they also note that I laugh more than I used to.
So perhaps things are looking up. Life works, I believe. It really does work. But at some point we have to work with it...a skill I haven’t particularly developed. I’m not sure if it might be too late for me or not. I’ve received messages recently that my time here may be close to being over. Then again, I’ve gotten those before: I was positive, for instance, that I was going to die when I was 12. Now, I’m nearly four times that young age. We’ll see.
I took a picture of myself with my new digital camera the other day, and I couldn’t believe how deeply sad I looked. I smiled and took another picture. It wasn’t a very convincing smile, but it lightened the load a bit. I’ve started smiling to people in the grocery store again. Yesterday, some woman dropped what she was doing and asked if she couldn’t help me find something. That’s unusual service, and due perhaps only to my smiling in her direction. This stuff does work.
When I first spoke with Barbara those years ago, she urged me to write to Carla. I didn’t have enough self-worth to follow up on that at the time, but hey, life is ever-transformative. I’m not exactly writing to Carla now, but I’m writing to y’all, and maybe Carla will drop in too.
Thank you for having me amongst you, and thank you for reading. I look forward to sharing some time with you folks.
Where I come from, according to Aaron, I’m considered to be a wise being. “A fact you may find hard to believe,” quoth Aaron, and yes indeed that’s true.
I’m just now finishing the first of the “Law of One” books. The thing that struck me the strongest up to now is Ra’s name for us wanderers: “Brothers and Sisters of Sorrow.” I latch onto that name and hold it close. It feels right. Though perhaps I don’t even know what it means.
Like many who write here, I never felt as though I fit in. I didn’t fit in with my family of origin, or in any other group of which I’ve been a part. My first conscious thought, when I was a child and finding myself in a body surrounded by other bodies, was something like “Oh no, not again.” When I would find the world to be less than I expected, I would often hold my breath until I passed out. Even when I was three years old, there were times when my basic attitude was, “If this is all you’re offering, I don’t want to play.” I ended up being somewhat traumatized by the whole childhood experience. (My sister, a very wise woman, came out of childhood feeling fine and good; this was just me, being oversensitive).
I am not good at physical reality. I do not enjoy it. I, like so many of you have written, am very sensitive, almost allergic, to the world. It is too bright and too noisy and too chaotic. My body weakens immediately and catastrophically when I get even the smallest scent of petroleum products, especially scented oils. Tar, perfume, some deodorants, scented candles: deadly.
And these bodies! They are so dense. They take so much care and attention.
And being amongst other humans. Wow. I am easily overcome when I’m around too many people. (More than one is too many). I like people, and I like interacting with them, but it’s very difficult work. I often feel as though I’m trapped in a big iron box. The only way I have of communicating with others is to tap out messages in Morse code. They tap out some Morse code in answer. Neither of us can hear all that well, and neither of us has much mastery with Morse code.
Right at this moment, though, I come to you with a bit of a new beginning. My wife of a few years, a couple of months ago, invited me out of her life. That, mostly, is a good thing. It’s very easy for me to get lost in relationships. Especially that relationship, where I was busy loving her as much as I could, while trying to survive living in a small house with too many beings: her and her teenage children. (No, it makes no sense that I consciously chose such an environment to exist within). The person who was my wife is very physical. She lives fully within her body, and savors all of the pleasures that bodies bring. I, mostly, live in my head, or even a good couple of feet above my head, attempting I suppose to find some etheric plane that feels safer and more comfortable. We lived, then, in entirely different realities. No surprise that we didn’t very easily connect. I was living our marriage as an abiding spiritual bond, while she was living it as an unsatisfying, unconnected, not-exactly relational bond. She wanted passion, in all the ways that humans can be passionate. My best times weren’t the overstimulating moments of passion, but the quiet walks we took in the forest, or the neighborhood, or even the mall ferchrissakes, holding hands and sharing our thoughts and experiences. For me, those were the few times I was able to stop being self-conscious about being an over-large, clumsy organism lumbering through the world. For me, those were the times of true intimacy.
Anyway, now I am living thankfully alone once again, though I seem to have lost the knack of living alone without feeling lonely. I tend to have few friends, and she was it for a lot of years. Her absence is well noted. But truly, I was lonely when we were together, mostly, and actually I’ve been lonely most of my life. Lonely, with few skills toward connection.
As a part of this new beginning, I’m trying to reconnect with myself. I’m reading the Ra Material. I’m reading the Greater Community Spirituality books. I’m getting back into meditation. I’m once again following my interests and trying to find a space within me from which I can act upon the world. In other words, I’m trying once again to take my life seriously, instead of merely taking a role in someone else’s life. I believe that there is something I’m supposed to do here on the planet. Unfortunately, I don’t have a clue what that might be.
I guess I’ve always had a sense that I was supposed to be some sort of teacher. I did the logical thing, then, when I was a young man, and became a public school teacher. Public schools, though, are terribly unhealthy places. As everyone knows, they suck every bit of life out of people, teachers no less than students. So I quit teaching after a few years, and went to grad school. Being a slow learner, I undertook to become a professor of education. I thought I would see if I couldn’t change in some small way the nature of schools. But of course I just became a larger cog in the machinery of schooling that I found to be so damaging to people. So I left that arena after a few years as well. Perhaps I am supposed to be a teacher, but right now I have absolutely nothing to teach.
Something within me thinks that my role has something to do with communication, though I don’t communicate well, or often. I remember laying in bed when I was young (I don’t remember how old I was, but I remember which house I was in, so it must have been younger than 11 years) trying to figure out how one might write a book that aliens would be able to understand. This wasn’t something I was planning to do; it was more of a thought experiment: even if these aliens learned our language, I noted how much of our writing—and communication generally—was dependent upon cultural knowledge. Shouldn’t there be something that was more universal than our tiny human ways of describing experience? I didn’t know what that might be at the time. I still don’t, but I’m closer.
Right now, I work in printing. It’s one in a longish line of crazy jobs I’ve held trying to survive in this crazy place…though all the while unsure that I really want to survive. Sometimes, I still find myself holding my breath….
I’ve killed myself before, I sense, as a way out of this human world. I understand how that might have happened. It’s easy to start feeling isolated and alienated and compressed here. But I’m determined not to leave that way this time. Now that I have a lot of time alone, I am once again starting to sense my feelings stirring within me. I could never do that when I was married…one doesn’t easily create a space for the subtle aspects of feelings when one is in survival mode. My feelings are often centered on pain and sadness and sometimes even hopelessness, but there are glimpses of joy, occasionally, too. And freedom. When I think to notice, I find a good deal of beauty in the world. The people I work with sometimes find me crying, but they also note that I laugh more than I used to.
So perhaps things are looking up. Life works, I believe. It really does work. But at some point we have to work with it...a skill I haven’t particularly developed. I’m not sure if it might be too late for me or not. I’ve received messages recently that my time here may be close to being over. Then again, I’ve gotten those before: I was positive, for instance, that I was going to die when I was 12. Now, I’m nearly four times that young age. We’ll see.
I took a picture of myself with my new digital camera the other day, and I couldn’t believe how deeply sad I looked. I smiled and took another picture. It wasn’t a very convincing smile, but it lightened the load a bit. I’ve started smiling to people in the grocery store again. Yesterday, some woman dropped what she was doing and asked if she couldn’t help me find something. That’s unusual service, and due perhaps only to my smiling in her direction. This stuff does work.
When I first spoke with Barbara those years ago, she urged me to write to Carla. I didn’t have enough self-worth to follow up on that at the time, but hey, life is ever-transformative. I’m not exactly writing to Carla now, but I’m writing to y’all, and maybe Carla will drop in too.
Thank you for having me amongst you, and thank you for reading. I look forward to sharing some time with you folks.