He senses a freedom that he has sought for so many years but never realized he had the ability to dig into until the moment he wrote his first sentence to a story.
Was it in grade school that he first discovered the secret? It could have been Sister Josephine Francis who instilled the love of writing while guiding the boys and girls in writing with or without the Palmer method. Continue reading
Why is anger my “go-to” emotion? Why does it crop up whenever I’m confronted with something I don’t understand or something I feel threatened by?
“Crop up“ is not the right phrase to use. My anger “erupts.” It goes from zero to sixty within the span of a millisecond. It always seemed to be that way, even as a kid. Now at last I think I know why. Continue reading
If you could go back in time to attend a Meet-Up in Jerusalem with the famous rabbi from Nazareth to share some bread, wine and good conversation, would you sign up and go?
How about traveling back some 2,600 years to give a listen to the Four Noble Truths in northern India by a fellow who some claim had reached Enlightenment? Would you agree to meet weekly to discuss life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Continue reading
It should be as simple as that! If the federal government has reasonable suspicion to place you on a terrorist “No Fly List,” you should also be barred from buying guns.
No ands, ifs, or buts.  Continue reading
Simply cut back like the sandlot football running back you played as a kid while scampering on a field in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park.
You can’t go “cold turkey” on a lifestyle you’ve been living for more than 30 years. But you can choose to limit the amount of news you take in on a daily or even an hourly basis.  Continue reading
Peggy’s mother, Mary, answered and said “Hello, Michael.” She didn’t invite me in, but smiled, and I kind of smiled back.  Continue reading
I typed this over and over again, hoping that one day I’d learn the fine skill of typing as I sat in a class with all girls. Young women, I should say. I was the only male in the Delaware County Community College course of study, and I never once felt out of place or unusual.
I wanted to be a journalist, you see. So, I figured I had to learn the fine art of typing to file my stories. Continue reading
You should never call a woman a bitch.
Particularly if she’s wearing a long black robe and has the power to throw you in jail for anything deemed to be contempt of court. Her Court, that is. Continue reading
I love Coca-Cola. It has been my favorite drink since I don’t remember when. I guess it all started with the small green bottles that you had to use an honest-to-goodness bottle opener to crack open. Continue reading
My second wife stopped breathing shortly after they placed her in the emergency vehicle en route to a hospital some eight years ago. The day was six-months to date of her first bout with an emergency wagon when she fell in our Conshohocken, PA, home, suffering a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).
She remained in a coma for more than five days. This time, however, they were more certain that she would not recover from her latest, unplanned date with Miss Fate. A nurse or a social worker at the Hospital suggested I contact a priest to say the last rites for Wendy. Continue reading
My son, Nicholas, just didn’t seem to understand how much pain I suffered in Sutcliffe Park when I took him to see fireworks on clear and starry night sky on the Fourth of July some years ago.
At first, I enjoyed the rockets zooming into the air. They were colorful red, white, and blue explosions that took your breath away with gasps of wonder and awe.
Soon, however, they took on a menacing demeanor, as each blast began to remind me of the Vietnam War and the rounds of mortar fire that fell on me and my platoon some 40 years earlier.  Continue reading
I’ve opened my mind to a new way of seeing and I am free as long as I can keep my peripheral vision on anything but the object of my focus.
What I do is distract myself from looking at the car in front of me when I’m cruising on the highway. I set my gaze off in the distance, where I take in the beautiful blue skies interrupted now and again by a while cloud.  Continue reading
I see my life through the eyes of a kid who grew up in Brewerytown, swashbuckling my way through fights on the streets and later the jungles of Vietnam before finding my true calling as a spiritual clarion who wants all North Philadelphia children to return to their God-given Nature of Love. Continue reading
I meditated yesterday with members of the Center for Contemporary Mysticism in Chestnut Hill and found love hidden beneath a wall of pain I built up with my first wife.
I asked her to forgive me after telling her how sorry I was for hurting her, and that I always loved her and wanted to thank her for all she did for me.  Continue reading
It was the second time in about a week it turned up missing. The first time was in Korea, and I never detected its loss. The Reverend Lee, the WON Buddhist minister leading a pilgrimage in Korea last week, had approached me with a black object in her hand. She looked worried, and I couldn’t figure out what caused her distress.  Continue reading
I never wanted a cigarette as bad as I did when I got thrown into a “lockup” after getting kicked out of the courtroom by a judge whose ire I had raised by raising my own voice at him.  Continue reading
Julie traveled all the way from Chicago and came to the Lotus Flower Island with a question about her life’s purpose. By the time she left the privately owned spiritual retreat, there was no doubt whatsoever that she found the answer she was looking for.
It has helped me immensely in calming the “monkey mind” after a wonderful Korean woman introduced it to me, and it took a full day for me to understand its profound ramifications.
Continue readingI’ve been to some ten different Buddhist temples in the mountainous regions of Korea, taking in the rustic, centuries-old magnificent works of art and spiritual creations of man. I felt uplifted when entering doorways that millions, perhaps billions, of others walked through in search of peace and calm on their way to potential enlightenment.
Continue readingThis chant is recited numerous times by participants in a WON Buddhist Meditation as part of a routine that involves chanting, sitting meditation, and walking meditation.
Continue readingMy all-time favorite Philadelphia Judge was James Lineberger, a no-nonsense jurist who’d scare the hell out of many a defendant I’d bring to the bar of the court, and one time caused one of my clients to pass out when he sentenced him for a heinous crime a jury found him guilty of committing.
Judge Lineberger could also be as warm and fuzzy as a teddy bear who would leave the bench at the top of the courtroom and float down to the metal bar when spotting a Korean woman. He could serenade in her native tongue while gazing out from his big, lovable, and loving eyes.  Continue reading
I have no idea what Saint John of the Cross meant when writing about his spiritual struggles several centuries ago, but I feel as if I’ve been going through one all day today.  Continue reading
I never thought I’d start off a meditation tale by using the word “killing,” but in this case, I believe it is somewhat appropriate. Killing the “dis – ease” is more like it.
Killing it softly, one breath at a time, that is!  Continue reading
Continue readingPride Cometh Before the Fall.
Exhilarating yet humbling. Emptying while also fulfilling. Joyful but just a little bit sad. Most of all, however, it is loving. Loving from that person both through him and in him. Loving for yourself and for those fortunate enough like me to be in the individual’s presence Continue reading
Korea opened me to another world in the Far East, and I can’t understand why the United States of America has not adopted some of the more useful and expeditious activities here.  Continue reading
That’s one of the prayers I’d recite as an altar boy at St. Ludwig’s Roman Catholic Church, and I’ll never forget it ‘til the day I die. Don’t ask me what it means right now. I never figured it out as a kid, but I loved to say it!  Continue reading
Korea awaits me next week as I travel more than a thousand miles to find myself and discover reasons why I am still here on planet earth.
Yes, I’m joining a group from Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago that will fly to Seoul, South Korea, to take part in the centennial celebration of the WON Buddhism by its master on April 28th, 1916. Continue reading
In recent days I received a visit from Kyrgyzstan at this site called Contoveros.
Kyrgyzstan is a small Asian country that revolted in 1910 against the Russian government and then was taken over by the former USSR until reacquiring its independence in 1999.
The Beatles got it right in the 1960s.
“All You Need is Love.”
“Love is All There Is.”
————–
I couldn’t agree with them more, particularly after experiencing the warm glow and gentle caress of a bunch of lovers who helped me to open my foolish heart to “A Course of Love.”  Continue reading
It’s a pain in the hip, the shoulder and the lower part of my back, to tell you the truth.
I recently learned that I have arthritis. It’s killing me. Continue reading
The Heinz ketchup bottle illustrated what it could look like . . .
And I have fallen victim to it whenever I try something new and start to visualize what could possibly go wrong.
It’s called “Anticipation Anxiety Continue reading
Collegeville may or may not have been named after a religious school called “Ursinus” in the central part of Montgomery County. . . Or some long ago seminary school. I really don’t know, but I rode through it when traveling to one of the last outdoor movie theatres, the one located in Limerick, Pa, a drive-in movie just outside of Pottstown.  Continue reading
I heard a banjo strum as I fed the birds outside near the plum tree in my yard this morning. Banjo? Strumming? Where could that have come from, I wondered?
Continue readingI went within and felt nothing this morning. I knew this day would come, but I thought I would put it off until the day I’d die. Yes, I thought I’d have enough juice within to tell my story until I took that last breath.
But Life fooled me. It hit me upside the head, showing me, you can’t take anything for granted. All things are subject to change. All phenomena are transitory, all are impermanent. The only permanence that exists is Love I believe that energizes us and the world we all live in. Continue reading
Day 7 – Total Balance Is Natural Balance
Question 1 of 4
Describe three sources of inspiration in your life that keep you aiming to be a better you.
— Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra’s Free 21-day Meditation
If I had a magic wand, I would wave it and remove all of the hate in our land. It would take away the hurt all felt throughout the ages of man from the beginning of time, when Cain killed his brother, and when a stupid Esau sold his birthright to his brother Jacob for a lousy bowl of soup.  Continue reading
Love makes our world go ‘round. It provides the essence of all that exists in our solar system. It created what our scientists call the “Big Bang,” and it continues to expand even though we are unable to see it with our limited vision.
One doesn’t have to go on a diet to lose the excess weight of a lifetime of living. All you need do is to lighten your mind, get rid of burdens carried from childhood when the trauma of difficulties and missteps caused you to stumble and lose faith in your God-given direction.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Holotropic Breathwork these past 10 days in Germany, it that I am a violent person. Violence was all around me when I was born. My mother almost died, I heard, and as a result, she suffered post-partum depression, and I was shipped out to live with my grandmother in another state in the USA. I don’t remember any of this, but you see and begin to feel things when you take part in a program like this, Breathwork.  Continue reading
My host in Freiburg, Germany, escorted me and her husband on a shamanic journey as we lay on the carpeted floor in their guest room, and she guided us to the “lower world.” She drummed for a good 15 minutes, never letting up the beat as she walked around us, covered by blankets with eyes closed and our hearts open.  Continue reading
The Shaman applied pressure with his fingers and thumbs to the side, back, and front of my skull. He told me to let him know if he caused me any pain.
I felt some discomfort, but it wasn’t intolerable, and so I said nothing and let him continue the process as I sat in a chair in front of more than a hundred people attending the symposium on “What is Healing? – Archaic Traditions Meet Ways of Experiencing Modern Consciousness Exploration and Psychotherapy.” He was the principal speaker, having taught the participants to dance and sing in two large circles in the room where we had met.  Continue reading
We’ve all experienced love in one form or another. Most remember the romantic love that may have flourished when we were young and felt the longing to receive the touch of love from another person.
Love also appeared in our lives as infants as our loving mother held us, cradling our small bodies with her hand behind the back of our necks. She held the spot where the brain and skull come into contact with the spinal cord, the neck area.
Don’t take my word for it. Scientific research has discovered that the active conditions of anxiety and agitation cause unhappiness. Becoming quiet and stilling the mind lowers blood pressure and relieves the stress that’s produced in our busy lives.  Continue reading
Those words in German jumped off the page from a brochure I couldn’t read, but by the end of a presentation in Freiburg, Germany, I got a better handle on who does the healing.
I see how I have become a slave to this, always rushing to see a doctor, to appear at a Court proceeding, or get somewhere for someone’s wedding in an adjoining state. The state of my mind is not fooling me anymore. I see this habit for what it really is.
I feel like the character in a comic strip who has had a cloud over his head with nothing but calamities and obstacles blocking his every move. No matter what he did, he’d be thrown off stride, be it from a torrential rainfall or an avalanche along a sunshine-filled pathway.  Continue reading
I got the best sleep I’ve had in years last night and I owe it all to the treatments I have received for not only what ails me, but what has been blocking my lower brain from connecting with my upper brain.
I slept like a proverbial baby, having gotten up only once during the night — around 4:30 am — to relieve the bladder and be kind to my prostate. Going back to bed, I drifted right back to sleep and enjoyed a complete dream of the old neighborhood and my days in a lawyer’s office, both in Philadelphia.  Continue reading
For the past five days, nothing greeted me when I got out of bed.
There was no ache, no pain, no reminder of how bad my back has become after so many years of walking, running and standing on this earth. Not to mention, jumping out of an airplane five times, landing badly on my first parachute jump, and hiding it from the military instructor who would have kicked me out of jump school had he suspected I injured myself.  Continue reading
I grew up in a two-story row house in North Philadelphia in a mixed neighborhood where we played in front of the fireplug and got ice from old ice trucks that made their way up the tiny one-way street. Continue reading
Blue has been my favorite color since I don’t know when. I guess my parents influenced my choice when I was young. I mean, I was a boy. And I was born in in the land of the red, white, and blue. Continue reading
I’m enjoying life and feel a peace and calm I didn’t know I’d ever experience again. It’s like falling in love for the very first time. I look forward to each new day filled with hope and a smile for whatever life presents to me.  Continue reading
When will I ever learn to trust the Universe?
When will I develop enough faith to believe things happen for my well-being? And when can I truly trust my instincts and live more peacefully in tune with what the Cosmos is manifesting just for me ? Continue reading
I think I’m going “Cat Shit.” You probably heard of someone going “Bat Shit.” But I’m here to tell you that I’ve gone “Cat Shit” and this is the reason why:
My son’s cat, Daniel, has developed some ESP skills. Extraordinary Sensing People skills.  Continue reading
A few weeks ago, I envisioned what the coming year would be like in a “Vision Board.” I got together with a small group and pasted magazine pictures and bold 48-point type letters to a cardboard placard showing what we would like to see enfold in 2016.
I placed the Vietnam War book at the top, adding lots of spiritual and meditative symbols alongside it. On the bottom line, I pasted “Love to Travel” and displayed two large pictures of my son and me on a cruise to Alaska some two years ago.
Mysticism can erupt while in a dream. If you believe, you can see the future or better understand the past. You can dream up a vision and let your heart turn to what you really love, rather than be satisfied with what you already have — or have not!  Continue reading
A gun appeared in my guided meditation last week and I was afraid something horribly wrong was about to happen. It was a small, black handgun, what they used to call a “Saturday-Night Special.” Continue reading
Psychometry – the art of visualizing an energy force or spirit from a token or an object – really does work.
I recently took part in the practice and discovered insights I never believed possible until I realized I had developed some sort of psychic ability.  Continue reading
The word, “Contoveros” in Latin means “Singer of Truth.” I didn’t know that as a child, when I learned that it was my father’s real last name. Someone at Ellis Island shortened it to “Contos.” One of my wives once told me that the new word means “Short.” Continue reading
It was the ice on the truck that beckoned to me when I was six years old and playing on the one-way street near my home in North Philadelphia. Continue reading
“Think before You Speak” reads the sign that my new best friend gave me for Christmas. She thought of me when she saw it, she said. She knew how many problems I had had with boundaries. Or, rather, lack of boundaries.  Continue reading
Reiki, the universal life energy, opened me to one of the most vivid dreams of my life last night. And, as my Reiki teacher once told me, “Write down your dreams . . . There could be a message in store for you.”  Continue reading
“What am I doing here?” I asked myself as I sat in a cushioned chair with some 50 other people early this morning on the last day of 2015. I was here at the invitation of a woman I hardly knew, a minister, who enticed me to join the world in a planet-wide prayer for peace. Continue reading
I experienced something scientists have labeled “Post-Traumatic Growth” twice in my life and some forty years apart. Both led to major changes in my life and a new look at life like I never had imagined it to be. Continue reading
I don’t feel my age. I know I’m getting older and will soon meet my Maker. But I just can’t see myself as a senior citizen, let alone someone who will one day praise the glory of Medicare and the free rides on public transportation in Philadelphia.
To tell you the truth, I feel like I’m seventeen years old again. My body would disagree, but my heart and my mind often see things from that period of time . . . It was a time when I had just graduated high school and the world was my oyster, so to speak.  Continue reading
I didn’t know how much joy there could be in grief until sorrow encompassed me and a warm flow of unconditional love spread throughout my entire being. Someone I knew experienced a death in her family and it hit me like a proverbial ton of bricks when I learned of her demise. Continue reading
Mental illness scares the shit out of me. The very term conjures up images of some crazed guy with wild, straggly hair and a demon-like smile of malevolence. Steven King kind of comes to mind when I think of someone who might be a little touched in the head. A Stephen King character, that is. Not Stephen King.  Continue reading
I love my cousin Betty Ann. She’s a few years older than me but I warmed up to her just as my adolescent hormones started to bubble up as I visited her at her farmhouse in New Jersey years ago. Continue reading
I would love to write a book about how people came to the current journey they’re on.
You see, I have this tendency of going up to people and asking them how they came to be where they are; that is, spiritually, if you know what I mean.
I know very little about New Age holistic energy and healing. Yet, I believe that some force beyond my understanding has arisen in my life and I’ve become the beneficiary of something mystical.  Continue reading
When was the last time you read a book where you had to stop to digest what you just took in because you wanted to savor what you felt?
And then while resonating with it, you get a warm glow about yourself; you feel lighter, more connected with the world, and so happy that another person can put into words what you know is so true?  Continue reading
Why is it that I find myself sticking my foot into my mouth every time something good comes my way? Why do I screw things up so badly? What curse have I created in some past life for me to resolve through some kind of karmic debt that I must repay in this lifetime?  Continue reading
Have you ever met someone who tells you what you and he or she had done so many years earlier when you hung out that time, but you don’t remember? This happened to me recently at a neighborhood reunion.
Try as I might, I couldn’t remember what the hell they were talking about. Worse yet, I couldn’t place them in my memory bank or through the retrieval process. Who is this person, I asked myself while smiling and laughing hard at the retelling of a story they seem to have gotten so much out of.  Continue reading
Reflections opened a new world of understanding today. Years after a traumatic event, I can look back and see things in a totally different and healing fashion.
I couldn’t do it when the shit was happening. It hurt too much.
Even five or ten years after the trauma, I’d get sweaty palms and a sped-up heartbeat when thinking about the worst day of my life. I couldn’t dwell for too long without having to relive the God-awful experience.  Continue reading
I fall to my knees every day and give thanks for at least three things that I am totally grateful for. I usually include my son and at least one of our cats but also acknowledge the advent of a new day as well as a nice new warm bed and the person who invented the heater to keep all of us warm. The cats included!  Continue reading
Saint Francis of Assisi believed so strongly that money was the root of all evil that he had forbidden his followers to ever handle it.
Literally!
No matter where I go, Philadelphia will always go with me. I’ve taken the old neighborhood to combat in Vietnam as well as to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. I let it shine in the courthouses of Philadelphia and the one and only house of pleasure I visited in Panama.
Yeah, I’m from Brewerytown, an old German-based section of Philadelphia that families of beer-makers settled in a small enclave of the City of Brotherly Love. Brewerytown is near the Philadelphia Zoo on Girard Avenue and not too far from the Eastern State Penitentiary, where Al Capone once lived in a section called Fairmount.  Continue reading
I remembered what love once meant to me, and I thought I’d share it with those of us who might have forgotten it.
I’m talking about the love that hits you upside the head when you’re not looking; the type that won’t let you think of anyone else besides him or her; the love that you wish your lover would feel but you’re too afraid to hope for a schmuck like yourself.  Continue reading
I am to be executed tomorrow and tonight I’ve been offered the chance of a lifetime. I can eat anything my heart desires!  Continue reading
Who am I? What do I believe? And can I name a few of my beliefs?
Let me name a few things I believe about myself. They’re in no particular order. 
I believe that all of us are placed on this earth for a purpose, and the aim for us in life is to find out what that purpose is!
We don’t usually seek the answer right away. Most put it off until some calamity forces us to find answers to life’s most important questions. Why am I here? Why am I in this body? Who am I, really?  Continue reading
“I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, and more desolation. Some of these young men think that war is all glory but let me say . . . ”War is All Hell!”
American Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman
If you haven’t tried it, you ought to Google “EFT” and see if such a technique could help with whatever might ail you today!
I grew when meeting four people on Monday who helped me expand my consciousness in ways I had never known existed before. Someone introduced me to the Fifth Dimension, while another invited me to a New Age exhibition in Bucks County, where light-workers of all shapes and sizes would introduce newbies like me to new and exciting pathways to Nirvana. Continue reading
It’s finally over — the Big Dump has ended! A thousand and one useless items I’ve been hoarding for 30 some years got picked up and hauled away. I feel exhausted but relieved like I just ran a 5-mile marathon and can’t take another step until I stop and rest. Continue reading
Death doesn’t seem to scare me as much as it used to. I mean, I see it as a transition, and not an ending. In some ways, it will be a welcome “new adventure” if you think about it in spiritual terms.
No, I’m not talking about heaven and hell like the Catholic nuns and priests preached to me as a kid at St. Ludwig’s Roman Catholic Church where I served as an altar boy and wanted to be a priest until I discovered girls. I’m talking about a transition to a “way station,” a place where your spirit — or soul — ascends to meet with higher spirits or what some might call Ascended Masters.  Continue reading
Like December 7th, 1941, the date of “9-11” will go down in American history as a new generation’s Day of Infamy.
In my lifetime, it ranks up there with the horrific day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  Continue reading
You wanted more, and I couldn’t give it to you. I was seeking love, romance, and someone I could be committed to. You simply saw me as a “one-night stand.” Someone you enjoyed being with for an hour, a night, or just one day in the life of two ships like us meeting briefly on a night at sea.  Continue reading
On this Labor Day weekend, I’d like to offer the song “Joe Hill” to all my union-supporting friends and share the story of the man who helped me as a union organizer in what seems like another lifetime ago. Continue reading
Musical refrains from Rock & Roll songs helped get me through the Vietnam War. I didn’t know all the lyrics of the songs, only those short parts where I’d stop what I was doing and raise my voice in unison with the lead singer. 
Philadelphia will be offering the world something that two of the planet’s great spiritual leaders wish that all living beings could provide: “a full day of kindness.”
That’s right. My hometown will be the site where Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama will visit in September and October of 2015, bringing their messages of peace and brotherly love to a world that deserves more of each. As part of the once-in-a-lifetime gathering, Philadelphia will sponsor “A Day of Kindness” on Oct. 27th, the three hundred and thirty-third anniversary of the founding of Philadelphia by the Quaker William Penn. Continue reading
Kids I grew up with in the tough section of North Philadelphia said that I had “a lot of heart.” I cherish that statement more than any I later heard as a teenager, a young adult, or someone older looking back on what made him the proudest in his short lifetime. You’d have a “lot of heart” if you didn’t care for the consequences when sticking up for a black kid when a white “friend” called him the “N” word and then classified you as a “N-gger lover” for coming to his defense.
Contoveros 
