Fortunately or unfortunately – whichever way you want to look at it –we as human beings are obssessed with ourselves. The most amazing thing I find is that people with the most basic lives still have the ability to see others as less important. I was lucky enough to wake up the other morning and realize just how ordinary I was.

Sometimes it seems as though I think about sex way too much. The ironic thing is, that when I stop thinking about sex I wonder where my sex drive went. I can have both of these thoughts during the same day and believe that both of them are correct. Not only that, but I will do the same thing with food, exercise, money, or just about any of the other things that life requires.

The fact that I can be on both sides of the debate that takes place in my own mind would ordinarily lend to the idea that I have schizophrenia. The reason that doesn’t take place is because the rest of the world appears to be in the same unfortunate boat. What is this split that we as humanity are suffering from? I mean, doesn’t it make sense that one should just be able to have a thought, follow through with that thought, and get on to the next thought?  How is it possible that an individual can be on more than one side of a debate in his or her own mind? The unfortunate answer is we are not individuals. The word individual implies an “undividedness.” But I have yet in this lifetime to meet anyone who is not divided against themselves. When this behavior is taken to an extreme people are medicated, hospitalized, or placed in therapy. The problem is, who said that the therapist themself was not divided?

Having worked in the mental health field for many years and being on both sides of a locked therapeutic door, I say from my own experience that those who we believe have our best interests at heart do not have the ability to do so. In other words, a 350-pound chain smoking psychologist is undoubtably more screwed up than any patient she sees. Now she may say that she is wearing her psychologist hat and that the way she feels personally doesn’t show in her treatment of clients, but it takes very little intelligence to realize that is untrue. Her fat miserable ass is going to see the world through her fat miserable eyes and she is going to make recommendations based on how she feels.

Since the day we are born, society begins to put ideas in our minds. They treat these ideas as though they are the “truth” and then begin to shove those ideas down our throats even before for we begin to speak. We are given names, nationalities, religions, families, towns, beliefs and all sorts of other nonsense and told this is who we are. Underneath all of that is a silent knowing, an animal instinct which humanity has not trusted for millennia.

Psychologists and psychiatrists are your new priests. They are your moralists and your politicians. They believe in an ideal which is unachievable and has never been achieved by humanity. And when placed against the ideal there is not a human being alive who does not fall short. It is a nonexistent set of ideas lending toward a perfect human being. Sigmund Freud said that the best humanity can hope for is that we can take man from a state of abnormal unhappiness and bring him to a place of normal unhappiness.

Here comes the point. We as human beings spend a lot of time and a lot of energy trying to adjust to an abnormal society. It is always the individual that is questioned and never the society itself and this creates a misery and an unneeded easiness inside of us as people. The only way I can see to move toward a direction of real freedom is to undivide one’s self and return to that state of quiet knowing. Otherwise we are forced to just chase our tails and to live forever underneath the weight of other peoples control.

I am very familiar with receiving.  Receiving charity, receiving pity, receiving welfare checks and holiday meals at the Rescue Mission.  The price paid for such “gifts” was payment of dignity, integrity, honor and self-esteem…with full payment demanded at the time of service.

So needless to say I was shook when Eban suggested I learn how to receive fully, especially lately as I have been really focusing on giving away as much value as I can through my various blogs, articles, e-mail marketing, reports and newsletters. Even now I am searching for the words to describe the meshing of colored emotions that consumed me.

Inside, at the very core, I am sure there is helplessness, powerlessness, hopelessness and a whole host of other LESS-NESS-ES that are not even nameable, so I tried to shake it off as an idea that just didn’t really apply to me. I figured he was speaking to some of the other members of the virtual class and I left it at that.  He went on to explain the difference between “getting” and “receiving” and things began to make more sense. “Getting” in the way I am talking about it here implies a lack of concern about how you acquire something. In other words, a thief with $100 may exchange his money to “get” something, or he may simply steal in order to “get” the very same thing. In this way the acquiring of the object is primary and the means of acquiring secondary.

To “receive,” on the other hand, requires ”presence.”  It requires one to allow themselves to fully be with the exchange and fully experience the emotion as something is acquired. Sounds easy enough, right?  Until someone says,” thank you” and I say, “don’t mention it.” Or someone says, “what you wrote was amazing,” and I act as though I did not hear them or even worse say something like,” yeah but I have to get my typing speed up, my spelling/grammar better,” or any of my other standard ways of not “receiving.”

What’s my point?  I am, as promised, celebrating Thanksgiving alone. I have some ground turkey defrosting on the stove and I’ll make some rice. I think I can turn it into tacos, only I don’t have any seasoning.  Oh…wait, I have ranch dressing and tortilla wraps, it can be like TEX-MEX!  Anyway, earlier I walked across the street in my sweats with sandals and socks on to this little bodega for a cup of coffee. As I approached the door I saw a sign that says, ” Happy Thanksgiving-Free Coffee!”  Now the owners of the store are of an Eastern decent. Chances are they do not celebrate traditional Thanksgiving, but here they were giving everyone ME free coffee.  My goal then became not to say anything dumb like: “Are you sure you don’t want me to pay” or ” hey, do you guys celebrate Thanksgiving?”  I was also tested with not DOING anything dumb like leaving and going to another store where I had to pay or buying a candy bar so I felt like I paid. Nope.  My job was to receive. So I made my coffee, added hazelnut cream and made it delicious just as if I were going to pay.  Part two of receiving is to show appreciation. Not, “hey, thanks” and keep on moving.  No. I was to stop, look them right in the eye, connect with them and say, “thank you, I appreciate this.”

I did a good job. I felt it, he felt it, it was cool. I almost cried walking back across the street. But I did not…because I am still REALLY FUCKING COOL!  

It is good to be in this life experience. THANK YOU for taking the time to participate in my life.

“Who are we trying to impress,” I used to wonder.  I mean, I can never recall anyone of any importance coming by for Thanksgiving, or any other day for that matter. If anyone did come by, I can assure you that they did not stay long.

We were not a family of football lovers. We were not Indians or pilgrims. And we didn’t really even like each other, but every year we did the same ritual as every other family. The only difference was, our routine was tempered with an air of misfortune and discomfort for all those involved.

There was one thing that my brothers and I could count on that would add delight to the day.  It was a homemade “dip” for chips, veggies and just about anything else you could slather with an onion, mushroom and cream cheese condiment.  The “dip” itself was a holiday miracle since my three least favorite ingredients in all the world are onions, mushrooms and cream cheese.  However, when added together — blended and refrigerated overnight, it created the most wonderful food of the year! I did not require turkey, stuffing, ham or cranberry sauce, but I would go to bed on Thanksgiving Eve with a rumble in my belly ready to wake up and eat as much of the creamy, white deliciousness as I possibly could.

So while other families did whatever they did, for the next 30 days I ate dip. From Thanksgiving to Christmas as much and as often as I could, I would stuff my little fat face with my mother’s homemade secret. Chips, wheat-thins, pretzels, broccoli, carrots, bread, cauliflower and my tiny, greedy, little fingers were the perfect pallet for the delicious madness.

I will “celebrate” tomorrow alone. Finding myself surprised that all the stores are closed, just like I have for the years that have passed.  I will peer out my window and watch as cars pull up to my neighbors’ homes with smiling passengers bringing gifts. I will wonder if they are really as happy as they appear to be. I will already know the unfortunate answer without having to ask.

I WILL wish I had a huge bowl of my mother’s dip all to myself that I could eat until my stomach hurt.  However, I will remember I am no longer a child and for that I will be grateful.

I wish for death from you

I am too afraid to kill myself and too angry to keep on living

I am fifteen years old.

Feeling suicidal is a funny thing when you think about it. It sort of looms over you and seeps into everything you do. It’s not quite depression; no, it is more exciting than that. There is a charge to it, like a sense of a piece of control that had been lost that’s now found. A glimmering key to freedom that can not be taken away.

Psychiatrists and psychiatric staff in general are taught not to worry as much about depressed patients as they are about patients who were depressed and now feel better. Those are the ones that are going to kill themselves. Depressed people have a more pathetic feel to them, a hopelessness that they enjoy.  It is almost as though they are doing something in their depression. That depression itself is an activity that they are tending to.  But when they are on the way back up, watch out! They get this boost of creativity and come up with elaborate exit strategies that they now the have the energy to carry out. When I was working  on the psych unit at the hospital that was one of the things that really intrigued me. You could never tell who was going to hang themself, slit their wrists or drink Drano the day they got released. It was always a mystery. A patient would be going home with a huge smile on their face,saying they were going to dinner with their family and then the very next day we would be in a meeting trying to figure out why they slit their throat with a chainsaw.  There was just no rhyme or reason to it.

So at 15 I am suicidal, again. It would come in waves. I could feel the sensation building, the self-loathing closing in and the anger that I usually shared with the world turning inward to eat me alive. That’s the way I used to feel about it — that my mind and emotions were literally eating me alive.  How strange it was to have an auto self-destruct mechanism that was out of control.

It would come and it would go. It would come and that would be exiting because at least I was feeling something new. Than the wave of disgust would drift out and I would miss it a little. Kind of like the hiccups – when you have them you can’t wait to get rid of them, but once they are gone you wonder where they went.

People tended to get angry when I spoke of such things; that didn’t make much sense to me. The posters at school said hat you should tell someone before it was too late. Then you would tell them and they sort of just stared at you, like you were supposed to have the answer. I am glad to say that I did finally come up with a suitable answer, although it was 10 years later.

I grew out of wanting to kill myself just like I grew out of asthma and pissing in my bed. There were no magic words, no magic pills and certainly no amazing therapists with all the answers. A time just seemed to come where the thought just drifted away alongside my belief in Santa. But those days at fifteen, sitting in my room with a box of razors, a pen, and a pad of paper were some of the longest days of my life. And I really can’t say I miss them.

Have you ever gone to a movie and knew for sure that the movie was good, only to find out that the people with whom you went felt that the movie was terrible? Who is right?  There is no possible way that you both are right, unless of course you are both wrong at the same time. So in this example what is true?  One is unable to really say, but it certainly brings about a valuable argument to the flexibility of truth.

At best we can hope to perceive the moment, otherwise we will tend to overlap our past again and again making our future look like our past. The only possible way to free oneself is to burn the past alive and to allow the present to engage your full attention. This is much easier said than done.

Great Swamis and mystics spend their entire lives in search of Nirvana, otherwise known as stillness. Over the ages humans have been in search of this enlightened state where the mind no longer keeps us tethered to the past.  As difficult as the task might seem to still the mind and emotions I again realize that, that is the work. Otherwise, in the words of Brad Blanton, we will only be “liars committing suicide.”

Thank You.

I AM SEVEN.  It’s Christmas Eve as I recall.  My older brother was lucky enough to be invited to his friend Robby’s for Christmas Eve dinner.  The tension in our house was so thick that he was smart and resourceful enough to get out. Lucky Bastard.  I, along with my baby brother, was stuck to begin the yuletide early.  It felt like one of those nights that even your breathing was disruptive.  We put on our pajamas before it was even dark outside. It felt silly at the time. Being smaller than those to whom you are delivered, it creates an uneven leverage and soon enough the spirit gets broken.  Like a dog tied to a tree in all weather you just grow cold, but in that coldness you are controllable. Only one who lets his emotions run hot is one you can not control, but disconnect a human being from his emotions and you have an android.  He listens…yes…but only as a method of survival.

So at three thirty in the afternoon we were in our pajamas. Mine were blue with the little feet attached and a long zipper that I often caught my privates in to the dismay of the neighborhood. My brother wore yellow. His had footies too.  I can not quite recall if he ever caught his member, although I am sure it must have happened.

There is no magic formula. I can tell you that for sure. I mean, people are less like cakes than we try to pretend them to be. One would think the same ingredients would make the same type of human being, yet I can honestly say that inch for inch and pound for pound my brothers — at least on the surface – turned out just fine.  I, on the other hand, suffered from every miscalculation.  I like to think it is because I have a superior type if intelligence and was less comfortable being caged in a swirling mass of disfunction…but again, who knows.

So as Christmas Eve kicked off, the miserable cloud of discontent showed its face long before jolly old Saint Nick ever did.  My parents had a right to be unhappy. There they were…another year of disappointment. Another year of barely making it. Another year of hoping for something to change…but nothing happened. And yet Christmas ALWAYS seemed to show up.  It always looked DUMB to me.  I mean I knew we were poor.  I knew that even if one of the children were kidnapped there was no way for them to come up with the cash to save them. But every year the same ugly painted Christmas lights, the same unhappy Christmas records, and the same miserable routine.

“But why?,” I often wondered. Why must we play this game year after year? The game where you give us the catalog to pick out the toys that you can’t ever afford to have Santa Claus bring us.  What is the point? In truth they were trapped. The haggard look upon their faces, the disappointment in their eyes.  The lies they must have told themselves to make it feel okay could have only been swallowed by cheap beer and boxed wine.

So we sat, my brother and I.   I attempted to cut the tension with obnoxious seven-year-old humor.  The house was hot and the smell of bargain brand spaghetti sauce filled the air.  My parents began to take their stance on opposite sides of the kitchen, opposite sides of the debate, and opposite sides of whatever was good about the other. The hatred boiled up faster than the huge pot of spaghetti as my mother filled the air with the vile disgracing of my father.

My dad was a good man.  Not so smart, not so confident, but good.  Maybe just ordinary.  Maybe not a superhero, but just a good, regular guy. He never did defend himself against the raging torrents of my mother. I could never figure out why.

She yelled.  He stood there.  She yelled some more, ultimately throwing a knife at him. Merry Christmas.  Not long after that we were able to return to the normal misery that the holidays provide.  My dad,  he went uninjured. The only thing hurt was his pride.

But why?  This is the question that burns within.  What is the point? And if we are in charge of our own destiny than why are so many of our destinies a mess? How come it is so hard for us to just grab hold of ourselves and create the life we really want? How did we as a species become so fragmented that there are forces and desires pulling us in opposing directions?

I don’t believe my parents are bad people.  I am certain they did the best they could and continue to do the best they can.  The thing that I find to be so baffling is why “the best we can” always comes up so short?

Be good to yourself,

Brian

It’s been well over ten years since I’ve been locked away for drug-related treatment. And it’s been over twenty years since I chased Michael Gram around the playground with an old yellow pocket knife I had found on top of my brothers dresser. I don’t recall being angry at Michael. What I do recall is he had on a blue winter coat and his hair was not brushed. In my mind his tousled hair was shaped like a fish with the head out front and a fish tail in the back.

I never caught him, although I am sure I could have if I tried.  He was a fat little boy; not a sleek  killing machine such as I was at the age of five-and-a-half.  But I had the knife and as I recall I had the POWER…at least over Michael Gram who ran as though the Jersey Devil himself was close behind. Looking back I still think we were both laughing. I think that until I remember the next day when I was in the principal’s office with my mother, the principal and a local detective.

” What happened yesterday?,”  they asked in their official tones. “Not much,” I replied. The prior day had already disappeared from my young mind. “NOT MUCH?!,” yelled the detective. He was a pudgy little man with a mustache who was obviously trying to comb his hair in a way that made him appear less bald. “I went to school?,” I suggested, hoping that I was giving the correct answer. “What happened with Michael Gram?,” asked my mom trying to help narrow down the day’s events. “Nothing,” I said still not remembering -or caring about - what we were discussing.

It was not long before the powers that be had turned my game of “pin-the-tail-on-Michael-Gram” into an ATTEMPTED MURDER case that day in the office of the Ocean Gate Elementary School. And it was not long before they had me crying, sobbing and wiping my face on my sleeve. I could see in the eyes of the elders around me the need and the desire for vengeance…the deep longing to be correct, to be understood, to be powerful.

They were afraid. Not of a little boy with a knife. Not that they thought I was a killer. Not that they thought I was violent at all. They were afraid of their loss of POWER. In me in that moment they saw someone who did not value their rules, their ideas of etiquette, or their beliefs of right and wrong. They saw someone who was not conforming and even though I was only a child it made them question what they stood for.  At least we hope so. Knives are bad, right? I mean, a kid getting chased around by a would-be killer is not so good for society. And society must stick together at all costs for the side of correctness, shouldn’t it?

The truth was, I had no intention of stabbing Michael Gram. It was NEVER going to happen. I chased him, it was fun, he was laughing, I was laughing, it was a game. But somehow that type of game was not acceptable to the society in which we lived. And therefore I was MADE WRONG!

Now let’s take a peek and see how things worked out for me as a result of this minor indiscretion. It was less than two years later that I was presented to my first mental health professional and told that they were there to help me with my feelings.  They poked and prodded and I was able to see how I was rewarded for displaying pain.  And if I said anything clever like, “things are okay,”  we just sat in an awkward silence for an hour and my mother was told I was uncooperative.

Not long after that I was placed on my first series of medications and they began to diagnose me with things like Bipolar Disorder and Manic Depression. I was eight years old.

Am I going to make a point? I might. The difference between what people thought was happening and what was really happening was as vast as the Grand Canyon. “The System” that was in place to correct the behavior of a kindergarten boy with a knife grossly miscalculated and began to steer me in the direction that they desired. This only made any emotional difficulties I may have had even worse.

So here I am eating coconut cream pie. And it is delicious and the reason it is delicious is because I am responsible for how much I eat. And since I have declared myself an independent nation there is no one to make me wrong but me.

“Love yourself, than watch.”~ Buddha

I was working at a job I couldn’t take anymore as a drug counsellor in Atlantic City, NJ. My earnings were just enough to keep me living in the ghetto I had learned to despise. I had enough education to get another job at another rehab facility and if I were lucky I would be able to move to another ghetto I could soon despise.

All this did not come without effort…I can tell you that for sure. I had just finished a two-year long custody battle with a woman who said out loud on more than one occasion that she had plans to “destroy me.”  She did a fairly good job for an amateur . Truth is, I didn’t need anyone’s help. I knew how to destroy my life all on my own and had been doing  so for a number of years. Between the drug-torn relationships and an outward disdain for authority, I was off to a roaring start.

Unfortunately I was headed in the wrong direction. I was a curious kid who just was not satisfied with the standard answers. But I would soon learn that curiosity without the courage needed to go out and find the answers leads to a miserable existence. And that is what I had.  At best, I had what some would call a bullshit kind of life.  At worst I was living the life of  “quiet desperation” that Henry David Thoreau spoke about.

In short, by the time I had reached the ripe age of thirty I was waiting to die. I figured I could hammer out this mundane, humdrum existence until I finally slipped quietly into my grave. With any luck I thought, “Maybe I’ll get to go soon.”  To spite the council of many mental health practitioners I was certain this was good logic. Let’s face it, if you were at a party and you were miserable you would leave, right? Well I was here at the party of life and I couldn’t think of two happy days that ever came back to back.

I had already been to NINE hospitals for what they diagnosed as everything from depression to nervous breakdowns. “Nervous?,” I used to think, “I am not nervous at all…. I just wish I wasn’t so damn broke!”, but to say I was nervous was a down right lie. Depressed? Well maybe, but my life sucked; it was never good, and it didn’t look like things were getting better anytime soon either.

Yes, it is from this place that we will explore possibilities. Does one create their own happiness? Their own success? Is life inside of our control OR is Karma or God pulling the strings? How can two scientists disagree, if science is a formula or fact-finding? And what are the chemicals in the brain that are so out of whack that a doctor will place an eight-year-old on methamphetamines for a diagnosis of ADD?

Who’s to blame? And when is it possible to stop blaming? If Alcoholic Anonymous works, why do they have to “keep coming back?” Some may say I’m just making trouble. Some may think I’m just saying what’s on mymind. Most will just ignore me.  There is a comments section below so we can all get involved.