I began a major endeavor this month to re-edit all of the Blog posts that I had written over the years, and it has re-opened many of the hopes and dreams that I once shared while writing and sharing messages at Contoveros.Wordpress.com.
It all started with a dream I had about Socrates and Plato which connected with my “active imagination” that the eminent psychologist Carl G. Yung had wrote about in hisPsychology of the Unconscious.
Continue readingIt’s been six months since I entered the hospital and got transferred from one rehabilitation center to another, but I think I may have finally licked the worst of my ailments and am ready to join my old household. I still have trouble walking from one room to another, and I need assistance from someone walking behind me while climbing up the stairs.
Continue readingI was escorted from my home by a Uber driver for the first time in my life when I learned the Veterans Administration provides the service free for disabled veterans.
Continue readingI believe that I am finally cured of pneumonia, rhino virus bacterial pneumonia that is, which I believe I got after Covid struck me for the second time in October and stayed with me through what I thought was nothing more than a persistent cough and excess phlegm problem.
It tired me out so much that I stopped walking my daily 10,000 steps and was lucky to step 3,000 times a day, according to my Fitbit, needing tissue paper and a makeshift handkerchief for the congestion that had developed. I live with my son Nicholas and his family which includes four children which I had to take extra care while in their presence. I always wore a mask and and covered my mouth when I felt a cough coming while in the kitchen or dining room.
And then it hit me. Getting out of bed around 10 pm on January 21st I got dizzy, fell toward the floor near my bathroom, and my son me ordered an ambulance to rush me to the hospital. I had suffered no bodily injury, thank God, but the intake personnel at Bryn Mawr Hospital discovered that I had pneumonia.
Spent five days with feeding tubes of antibiotics being pumped into my body and a bunch of pesky little attachments to my chest and stomach. The food wasn’t bad but it often got stuck in my teeth and I had no toothpicks to remove the pieces. No one offered to help me with any floss and I had to use a broke-off piece of a plastic fork to get a little relieve.
And then the indigestion kicked in. I suffer from acid reflux and my daily medicine from the VA hospital was stopped by the doctors because it would interfere with their antibiotics. Ah man, how I suffered. And not just for the five days in the hospital but a whopping nine more days upon arriving home and being directed to take antibiotic pills twice a day.
(I couldn’t believe the nurses at the hospital had to get the doctors to officially prescribe Tums to help me while I was in their hospital bed. They were not authorized and only the doctors could do it! Order Tums, man Tums.)
And where does that leave us upon this viewing? Well, I ate pepperoni pizza with extra cheese in preparation for the Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl game Sunday night and had no negative aftereffects. A sausage, egg and cheese sandwich from a nearby ALDI store was easily digested the next morning and today I can gleefully shout from my Conshohocken home “Free at Last, Free at Last, thank God Almighty I am Free at Last.”
SLOW DOWN!
I believe that is what the Universe is telling me as I have gotten older and time has caught up with this aging body that – for the life of me – can’t physically handle everyday chores and activities I routinely completed some six months ago.
Slow down. Yes, you are getting tired when you ascend the steps to get into your Conshohocken home and then many more steps to get to your second-floor bathroom and/or main bedroom. So, take a break. You have nothing to prove or to “carry-on” as us veterans used to say while serving in the military.
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Continue readingI will be participating this Sunday in a gathering sponsored by a group presenting a woman I have followed for more than 10 years on a spiritual journey. Lorna Byrne is a woman from Ireland who has been seeing and speaking with angels since she was two years old and written several books on how we can open ourselves to the angelic realm that exists for our benefit.
Continue reading I never thought that words I wrote on a slip of paper and dropped into a suggestion box would somehow enlighten me.!
The senior center I’ve attended for the past two years has agreed to hire a teacher, or what I would call a “guru,“ to show seniors how to meditate at the Upper Merion Senior Citizen Center.
Five or six people had signed up for further information at the facility and a librarian from the local library who teaches meditation has contacted someone to come to the center near King of Prussia, PA, and guide us. It will start on the third Wednesday of September, according to the Center’s president who arranged it all.
Relieved.
Grateful.
Joyful.
Those are the words that sprung from my heart and soul as I took in what the jury provided the entire world with their unanimous decision to convict a former USA president.
They say that “bad things happen in threes.” But I’m here to tell you that good things can happen in threes if you but open yourself to ’em.
Take today for example. I stopped at Lowe’s to get some of my walking steps in and felt proud to have parked in the spot designated with a sign that said “Veterans Parking.” I figured I might as well get some bird seed to feed my fine feathered friends who accumulate near the statues of both the standing St. Francis of Assissi and the seated Buddha.
Continue readingA Trivia game I played with senior citizens recently focused on musical songs that contained numbers in their titles. The experience stayed with me and later woke me at 3 am while I laid in bed unable to dismiss the songs not mentioned some 12 to 13 hours earlier at the Upper Merion Senior Service Center in King of Prussia, PA.
The songs we played included “One, Two Three” by Len Barry, “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford, “Nine to Five” by Dolly Parton, “One is the Loneliest Number” by Three Dog Night, “December ‘63 (Oh What a Night” by the Four Seasons, and “When I’m 64” and “Eight Days a Week” by the Beatles. I began to add more songs in my awakened state of mind and knew I’d get no further sleep until I get the songs out of my system and onto paper.
Continue readingI am about to get one of those RSV shots at the VA Hospital of Philadelphia to prevent any lung infection, and I wanted to share my enthusiasm for all the work the Veterans Administration has provided me with most of my adult life.
It started a month after exiting the Vietnam War alive and receiving a GI Bill stipend to become a “first-generation” college student, and a few years later, to buy my first home. But it wasn’t until I got caregiver burnout in 2008 while taking care of my wife, who suffered a traumatic brain injury from a fall, as well as a “PTSD-suffering uprising” from my combat experience, that I first got life support help from a VA hospital.
Continue readingDoes fate have anything to do with the day that a person is born? Can one person born on the same date years earlier have some sort of influence on someone born years and perhaps even centuries later?
I mean, I was born on December 1st and share a biorhythm with Woody Allen, Richard Prior, Lou Rawls, and Bette Midler, all of whom are or were older than me. I love to joke around and make people smile like the two famous comedians, and I loved singing Doo Wop as a young man and still believe I can carry a tune some times.
But I could not get over that the author of the horror book “Dracula,” an Irishman by the name of Bram Stoker who was also a theater manager, shares his birthday with a fellow born in Romania and was a prince in Transylvania by the name of Vlad the Impaler!
How strange or other worldly is that? Did the author know Vlad’s birthday when he wrote the book in 1897? The brutal and sadistic leader famous for torturing his foes and responsible for the deaths of some 80,000 people, was born more than 500 years before the novel’s publication. How crazy or ironic is that?
I check birthdays of famous people every day on a site called “Today’s Famous Birthdays.” For instance, singer Patti Page and “Gone with the Wind” author Margaret Mitchell share their birthday today. It is also the birthday of Edmond Halley, with whom astronomers have named “Halley’s Comet.”
But Bram and Vlad take the proverbial cake in my book. It’s weird man, weird!
While attending the 10th anniversary of the Center for Contemporary Mysticism, a mystical experience opened my eyes to so many spiritual possibilities.
Continue readingIt has taken me three years to complete one study and a mere two years to finish the other, but I believe I have contributed to the scientific understanding of reseasrchers for possible heart ailments and changes in thinking and memory for adults.
Continue readingWhile just starting to meditate, I could not get rid of thinking about the pains I was feeling in my body.
I had a major operation in May and am still suffering some aftereffects, including pain in my left side where a 12-inch incision was made to operate on an aneurysm. I was in the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for six days.
Continue readingI’m getting therapy once again for my well-being!
Physical therapy, that is. Although I could probably use a little for my mental well-being. (Just kidding.)
Continue readingThis month marks the 50th anniversary of when the Vietnam War finally ended. A Peace Accord was reached on January 27, 1973, making way for the complete removal of all troops by March 29th of the same year.
Many of us remember the chaotic pictures of persons trying to flee Saigon on the last day reminding me of the chaos that erupted when the United States ended The Afghanistan War on August 2021. The Vietnam War was America’s longest war ever until Afghanistan overtook it. Both wars became highly unpopular and some believe that politics had a lot to do with both battlefronts.
Fifty years ago the Vietnam War finally ended, but for many like myself, it feels like it was only yesterday.
Continue readingOne of my all-time favorite authors – a veteran who was a POW and a staunch anti-war advocate – would have celebrated his 100th birthday this month.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who turned me on to science fiction mixed with auto-biographical recalls, was born on Veterans Day in 1921, just three years after Armistice Day, which was the original veterans’ day. It commemorated the end of the European war “Over There” and was called “the war to end all wars.”
Continue readingI’ve been “Framed.”
And the person who framed me was none other than my son, Nicholas.
He framed all my medals from my enlistment in the US Army more than 50 years ago, including my service in the Vietnam War.
Continue readingContinue readingPerfectly, Unadulteratedly Human
The authentic human voice is a thing many writers strive to capture. Few can claim to have succeeded. Contos, however, very much has earned that badge of honor. The text is home to an authentic and powerful narration that still, in its honest humanity, grounds itself in the humble approach to one man’s life and what that life means.
I don’t often cry over books. It’s not that I can’t, it’s just something that very rarely happens.
I cried reading about the Kid of Brewerytown.
Take that as you will.Katherine D. 5.0 out of 5 stars
– Jan 22, 2022
“Potential Spam” is the innocuous term that Verizon classifies as one of several phone calls I get each day on my cell phone.
I immediately delete them, but have had an accident or two when I’d click the wrong button and end up dialing that number. I quickly stop any further progress at that number and click on delete. I got a feeling, however, that some “son-of-a-b” got a recording of my mistake and will log it into their account, but I really don’t know.
Continue readingI have been honored this Veterans Day through a recorded interview about my book on the Vietnam War for a program called “Good Morning Conshy,” where I share the broadcast with two companion pet managers for what is known as PACT. Many of the animals had assisted veterans who could no longer care for their pets and needed help for animals they viewed as their children.
We all had contacts with Conshohocken, a small borough just outside of Philadelphia, and learned that the interview would be recorded and made available on YouTube. Watching it, I noticed how white-faced I look after recovering from a stomach illness. I am glad I wore my “boonie hat” that I had saved from the Vietnam War. It shows one silver bar that was subdued to prevent the enemy from spotting an officer. I wore it only once before, and that was at Omega Institute at a five-day meditation retreat for veterans with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
Continue readingReview of Vietnam War Recall authored by Michael J Contos at Contoveros.wordpress.com
[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of “Vietnam War Recall”
Like many other young men of the time, author Michael Contos found himself in the military, headed to a turbulent region of the world to protect democracy. After completing Officer Candidate School, Michael was deployed to Vietnam to lead a platoon of infantrymen on missions while evading the formidable Viet Cong forces. Here, he describes the worst day of his life that led to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a debilitating condition that would threaten to consume his life and linger for decades; a day so jarring that he would not talk about it, even with his family.
Upon returning home, his experiences in combat haunt him, so he seeks the help of spiritual leaders to relieve the symptoms of PTSD. The story is told in the first person through flashbacks, introspection, and excerpts from the author’s blog. Through the narration, readers get a glimpse into the personal turmoil that many of our veterans face after combat.
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The best part of this book is the intimate and emotional description of PTSD; a young leader, not afforded time to grieve or debrief from his experiences, lives with the nightmares, flashbacks, and anxiety that seem to permeate every facet of his life. These intense feelings are captured clearly by the author.
I also love the way the daily humdrum of military life is portrayed, and the descriptions sure bring back memories for this veteran. The cadences, the euphoric feeling when you realize your parachute is perfect, and the anticipation of the return to the United States (DEROS) are very real indeed! A little humor, typical of military camaraderie, is also peppered into the pages of the story; I had to chuckle when I read about some familiar but important advice: never crap alone in the field!
Although the messages are powerful, the book does seem a bit repetitive at times. Other than this, there is nothing negative to say about the story; its purpose and voice are truly a gift to an audience who does not truly understand the realities of war and its crippling effects on our young servicemen, not only the ones who gave their lives but also those who returned bearing unseen scars.
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I happily give Vietnam Recall: The Best and Worst Days of My Life a count of 4 out of 4 stars for these reasons. The book appears professionally edited and is divided into chapters of appropriate length.
I particularly recommend this book to readers who love historical accounts of war and those who seek insight from a primary source about mental illness. Those with family members in the military will appreciate the insightful glimpse into the psyche of those who have chosen to defend our way of life. There is some moderate profanity, along with explicit descriptions of trauma and wartime peril; those sensitive to these topics may not want to read the book.
For all others, the book is a penetrating account of one man’s journey towards healing and peace. All who read this story will undoubtedly be moved by the author’s gripping words as he relives the most difficult moments of his life. He speaks for the countless others who remain silent.
******
Vietnam War Recall
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Dumb schmuck to be exact.
I got a call from my doctor at the VA Hospital of Philadelphia after having blood drawn earlier in the day. He was concerned about an increase in some bad things involving my prostate.
Whatever those things were, I knew they weren’t any good, and he advised me to have a test done to ensure that I was not developing prostate cancer.
Continue readingI experienced one of those “holy shit” moments the other day.
You know the type of experience you get from something you see, hear, or read, and you just have to say to yourself, out of earshot of everybody else, something like: “holy shitoli!”
Continue readingWhile I am still able to recall in some detail highlights of my early life before true adulthood, I decided to write them down for future generations and others who may want to commiserate with my adventures and misadventures.  Continue reading
I meditated this morning and realized there were few, if any, sounds coming from the street outside my home. Traffic usually provides noise from cars and trucks as motorists make their way along the suburban road in Conshohocken, PA, some 14 miles outside of Philadelphia.  Continue reading
Today is Vietnam Veterans Day, and the Year 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of my deployment in the war zone. I was a 21-year-old second lieutenant placed in charge of a platoon of some 25 men, many of them still in their teenage years and drafted like I had been.  Continue reading
It is hitting me more and more lately, particularly since I decided to do my own taxes for the first time in my life and not pay out nearly $300 to have a professional do the work.  Continue reading
Writing has opened me to a world above and beyond my five senses and I feel like an H.G. Wells whenever I revisit the past and recall what life was like when I was fortunate enough to stop the world for a few brief moments and write about something. Continue reading
She stared at me as I walked from the courtroom, and I felt her hate bore into me. Her whole posture seemed to drip with contempt, and what I could only feel at that moment was a curse from her whole being.  Continue reading
A steady drip from the faucet of my kitchen made my day today as I shouted “Halleluiah” during one of the worst snowstorms of my entire life.  Continue reading
I remember . . . cutting the back of my hand while running beneath the boardwalk in Atlantic City. It is the earliest memory I can recall. I couldn’t have been any more than three or four and cannot for the life of me remember anything else I had done at that moment in time. Continue reading
I experienced the Presence of God when I was 12 years old but didn’t know it until some fifty years later when I meditated and realized how much the Divine had filled me when I was praying for a girl I had just met on that glorious pre-teenage weekend. Continue reading
Alexander giggled like a schoolboy as 40 of us gathered for a service on Sunday and quietly attempted to meditate for about 30 minutes.
Wait a minute. He is a schoolboy. Alexander was just 14 years old yesterday when he attended the Tibetan Buddhist Center of Philadelphia with his mother. I was sitting next to the youth, and about halfway through the gathering, a sound erupted from the other side of the room. It sounds like someone adjusting a metal chair on the wooden floor, but to a young mind like that of Alexander, it also sounded like someone farting.  Continue reading
I learned to meditate more easily while riding on a train.
I had tried sitting mediation alone and with others, but was successful only once, and I really don’t know what I was doing. I was following a guru – a 15-year-old teacher from India — before I had turned 30, and I mingled with aspirants in an ashram in Philadelphia. I never touched Nirvana or reached the level that others seemed to rise to. Continue reading
Writing opens me to a world within that I usually don’t visit unless I’m asleep or go into a meditative state. I let go of most thoughts except the one that crops up as I focus on a subject, or rather, it reveals itself to me.  Continue reading
A “dead-dog-loser” is the name trial lawyers gave to cases no one expected you to win in court. I had a few of them and always tried my best to get a defendant to plead guilty before making a fool of myself and him by calling his case “ready” for trial. Continue reading
There is a message I receive every time I travel to the IKEA store and visit the “As Is” department. I get a feeling that the Universe is telling me to open myself to the message the Swedish furniture store wants to share with the rest of the world.
Accept life “As Is,” it softly calls out to me. Continue reading
– a student of Losang Samten. Tibetan Buddhist Monk
If I had a magic wand, I’d wave it all over my body, magically ordering it to relax and begin to accept all the good and the bad life has to throw at me
I would want to treat it all with equanimity.  Continue reading
I had my recurring dream again last night. For several years, I have gone to work at the daily newspaper, dreaming that the deadline for submitting copy was just minutes away and I had typed nothing about my story for the day.  Continue reading
“Twelve Angry Men” influenced my decision to practice law more than any movie I can remember while growing up in a working-class neighborhood of Philadelphia and being the first in my family to go to college. The movie has done more for understanding the workings of our criminal justice system than any books or school classes could possibly provide. Continue reading
“I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just thought you needed to know, that’s all.”
Peaches said nothing as we sat on the floor of her vestibule. I saw her eyes water up a little and I wanted to cry myself.
“I still love her” I continued without looking at the young girl I had shared such an intimate moment with at the young age of 19.
“I guess I never stopped loving her, if you want to know the truth.”
“You were her best friend in high school and you knew her as much as anybody did” I said, asserting a belief that neither one of us could deny. “I would break up with her, but we’d always got back together every time. You knew that when we first dated.”
“I should have been honest with you. But I liked you, I still like you. And wouldn’t hurt you for anything. But I don’t love you. I love Peggy, and I guess I always will.” 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
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
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
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
“I don’t know” is soon to become my life-long mantra.
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.
For me, saying “I don’t know” is a way of humbling myself and admitting that I know very little about the world I live in and what really matters in the scheme of life. No matter how hard I try to “get it right” through searching and throwing myself into one spiritual path after another, the end result brings me no closer to any definite answer and it’s okay to let it go and simply say “I don’t know” to the world.
“Dark Night of the Soul.”
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
Pride cometh before the fall.
Getting old is a real pain in the ass.
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
Carly Simon sang it . . .
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
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
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.
Jaya Herbst, a lecturer certified by the European Association for Transpersonal Psychotherapy – Eurotas, said there can be healing in the touch of one person upon another. But first there must be an intent, a “will” to love to help with the touch, be it to smooth the crying of a child or to hug a grown-up who needs the physical contact to know all will be just right in that moment. Continue reading
A wandering mind is an unhappy mind.
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
What is healing?
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 do! And you do!  Continue reading
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
Much of what I know about war was what I learned while playing as a kid. You know, using a stick or a broken branch from a tree, I’d pretend it was a rifle to shoot the bad guys who were out to get me and the rest of the good guys in my old neighborhood.  Continue reading
When I write, I try to tap into the child within. I try to “feel” something
that I can share with another, be it humorous, educational or shocking.
I have stories to tell from my past that brought me to this point, and I think they may help others to feel what I feel and to take action, even if that action is simply to refrain from acting or even thinking.
The child-like essence, I believe, stems from what Psychologist Carl Jung called the “Collective Unconsciousness.”
I call it the “Wisdom I was Born With” but can only be realized when I quiet myself and allow that cute little sonofabitchen kid to strut his stuff. I love him at that time, warts and all.
I think you will too once you get to know him and yourself a little better.
Just go within. Seek silence and you’ll find me within you.
I am you as you are me, and we are altogether!
Listen to what the Universe is saying. It may speak to you in ways you might not understand unless you’re open to all means of communication.  Continue reading
Closing my eyes, I open all my senses to group meditation!
The smell of lavender and a hint of myrrh greet me as I walk into the meditation room. I had not expected my sense of smell to be the first one to experience such a warm and inviting welcome. I should not have been surprised. The olfactory system is the first sensory organ I usually use, and I’m not too proud to state I am usually led by the nose.  Continue reading
Listen to yourself.
Close your eyes and go within and listen to the sounds of silence.  Continue reading
Peggy sat at the table of the Blue Jay Restaurant, staring out the window and wondering where her life had gone and what she should do with her new condition.  Continue reading
I believe that I have become a “spiritual soldier of fortune” and would travel anywhere my heart beckons me to learn, to pray, and to find answers about the universe.
I got an inkling of this calling when I was a teenager. It came about when I was 18, just out of high school, and experimenting with grass and LSD. Timothy Leary enticed me with his message in the 1960s, advising all to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” I turned on and tuned into the message but couldn’t afford to drop out because I was from a working-class family that saw work as a way out of poverty and into the middle class. Continue reading
Angels can perform magic if we open ourselves to ’em! Continue reading
If you didn’t know it by now, science supports the claims made by Abraham about the Law of Attraction and how it could help revitalize your life from this moment on.
That’s the word I got attending a workshop when a physicist met with Esther Hicks and explained how aligning with the Source, rather than resisting it, is based on the law of physics. “We knew that” Abraham said, speaking through Esther Hicks. Undaunted, the young man of science said that he realized it only after studying what the Law prescribes for all mankind. Align yourself with what you truly want in life and keep positive thoughts on achieving your heart’s desire. If you can imagine the happiness your achievement will provide, start with feeling that happiness now. Don’t wait for a result. Feel it in your gut, your marrow, your very soul.  Continue reading
“You don’t need to work when you are meditating,” Abraham told a young woman who was called to the stage to question the spirits about issues she was facing on Saturday. She was among some 15 people who shared the “hot seat” at the Renaissance Hotel near Philadelphia’s International Airport for a workshop.
The message resonated with me and I hope everyone of the more than 500 in attendance took it in and will try the 15-minute exercise once a day to see how easier it can be to get in touch with the Source energy within. Continue reading
I met Abraham up close and personal yesterday, and I learned the universe had called me to study the Law of Attraction as voiced by Esther Hicks, the one who channeled for the spirits guiding us back to the Source within.  Continue reading
What do you tell a person who wants to know about Buddhism?
What books do you recommend? What authors?
Should she look into mindfulness first, or jump right into a form of Zen Buddhism or the Tibetan Buddhism of the Dalai Lama? 
Belva, my new Internet “pen pal” and former sister-in-law, asked me about it. I suggested any books by Thich Nhat Hahn or by His Holiness, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. Don’t buy a book new. Get one used or from the library, I said, being a frugal veteran on a fixed income.
But now I wonder if I should have mentioned Jon Kabat-Zinn and any of his books on meditation. I figured one can’t really understand Buddhism unless one tries to meditate. Meditation is the foundation of most of the Buddhism I have studied. You must work on the preliminaries before moving on to the more complex forms of this philosophy, which can also be a religion.
I just read a book on faith by a meditation teacher Sharon Salzburg which introduced me to another aspect of Buddhism. I learned of “fixated hope” and the different versions of faith. Fixated hope is when you hope for a specific outcome, rather than hope and trust for an outcome that would be in the best interest of someone or some situation
“Bright faith” is a state of “love-filled delight in possibilities.” And then there is “verifying faith” where you don’t accept anything merely because it was passed down by tradition or written in some holy book. 
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“Put it into practice. See for yourself if it is true.”
These are the words the Buddha advised his followers some 2,600 years ago.
Beliefs come from outside of yourself, Ms. Salzburg said. Faith comes from within. Beliefs cling, while faith lets go.
Lastly, there is “abiding faith,” one that is “bone-deep” and a “lived understanding” of our ideals and how to put those ideals into an action that we know is true. We intend our faith and action to stem from what is called our “Buddha Nature” or what Christians call the “Christ Consciousness.” We try to live each moment of that nature with the two wings of love and awareness of compassion and wisdom.
Eventually, I can tell Belva that awareness and unconditional love are both based on non-attachment to everything, every thought, and every feeling. Not in a negative, nihilistic way, but without the intrusion of any prejudice or bias, without holding onto an experience or pushing it away. She would soon learn that nothing is permanent, things are constantly changing and in flux, and that nothing exists in and of itself, but is dependent on some other thing, some other phenomenon.
But what else should I say? What other advice should a practitioner offer to a novice on this journey?
What would you say? What would you offer? How did you start working out your own salvation along this path? Please leave a message to share with all of us with “Beginner’s Minds“. Thank you!
Could I ever be strong enough to let the more tender side of me take over and simply “Let Go“?
We all know how tough it can be to let go of something we’ve been accustomed to all of our lives. You feel like you’re walking off a cliff or jumping out of a plane with no parachute when you consider “letting go.” You’re facing uncertainty, the unknown, the void of a black hole that’s never been explored before. Unexplored by you, that is.
What if there is no God to catch you in mid-flight? Must one die before being re-born without the ego being in control? 
Perhaps that is what letting go is all about. Letting go of the thoughts, the beliefs, and the security, all of which are nothing but illusions the mind creates to keep us under wraps. Don’t be afraid to look for an answer outside of yourself, Michael J.
You don’t even know what it is, do you? You make up labels and believe yourself to be what your senses can see, hear, feel, taste, or smell. You, the poor wretched man. Don’t you know that you’re far greater than the physical plane you exist in? You are a Spiritual Being that can learn to fly, to live, and to love.
You knew it as a child. You felt it a long, long time ago when you were one with the universe. You knew the Divine existed in everything and in everyone, but you forgot it as you reached the age of reason and ate fruit from the tree of knowledge and got expelled from paradise.
By letting go, you can return to that peaceful loving place some call Nirvana. You can sneak back into those holy grounds and hide out with old friends who let their spirits rise above the world below. They’re the like-minded folks you’ve gotten back in touch with just as you saw the light.
They saw your light and beckoned you to join them.
They let go. They fell back in love with the greatest love of their lives.
You Can Too.
Just close your eyes, feel that warmth, and let it wash over you, permeating every inch of your body, your soul, your true self. Let the Lower one go.
We all know how tough it can be
I close my eyes, and I enter a world where nothing, but love exists within. It is a state of mind I visit more often now that I meditate early in the morning. You see, I roll over in my bed and wrap my arms around me, feeling the warmth slowly develop and then spread throughout my body. I “sense” a flow of energy — liquid energy — like a lukewarm form of lava flowing from the upper arms to my neck and back and then down through the arms, the torso, and then onto other parts of my body.  Continue reading
I miss you. My God, how I have missed you!
It feels like forever since we’ve been together.
I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I know that it’s my fault. I walked out on you, believing I could get along without you, without your guidance without your help. Without your Love . . .
I was a fool, and I know it now.
You knew it too, but you’re too nice, too loving to ever say “I Told You So.” There have been so many times when I tried to go it alone. I’d find small success and material gains here and there, but I’d always end up failing where it really counted. In my heart, in my dreams, even in my soul.
I didn’t know how much I needed someone like you until I hit rock bottom and experienced how miserable life could be without you.
I became the loneliest man in the world. I was too ashamed to admit I was nothing without you. That you were my reason for living, for breathing, for just “Being.” I realize now that I truly am a great big nothing without you.
And you care so much for me that you’ve always been willing to give me another chance at becoming the loving creature that the Universe had created me to be. I want to be more like you, to care more like you, to give more like you . . . to want nothing in return except the wisdom to know that it is in the giving that we receive, it is in the pardoning that we are pardoned, it is in the death to this world that we can truly find life worth living.
Thank you, my Divine One. I hope to be with you as one for now and forever more
The person who had the biggest impact on my life was my second wife, Wendy Wright Contos. She had a 157 IQ, but never once acted as if she was better than me. She easily got angry at injustices and would, on occasion, lash out against the hypocrisy of politicians, while helping the underprivileged and the rights of women in a male-dominated society.  Continue reading
A Viet Cong sniper was trying to kill me. Some motherfucker hiding in the trees, the bushes, the triple-canopy jungle had just shot at my platoon. I thought he was shooting randomly, despite the debris from the ground, grassland and other tiny bits of rock that struck me from a bullet’s ricochets.
No, he was aiming at no one but me! It’s taken me more than forty years to figure that out. 
Now I must try to answer the question, “Why was I spared?” and what will I do now with my life after seeing I got a second chance to live it toward a more purposeful ending?
Christ Almighty! How could I not detect this assassination attempt on my life in 1970? We had heard all the stories about the life expectancy of lieutenants — especially the second lieutenants, the lowest of what are called “junior” officers.
Yeah, you read that right. Some “urban legend,” gave the new-in-country officer no more than the time it might take for a helicopter to touch down in a “Hot LZ,” a landing zone where guns were blazing. Sixteen minutes was all the time it took for an enemy sharpshooter — a gifted sniper — to beam onto the newbie leaving the chopper to get his first salute in a combat zone. The lieutenant would end up dead before he’d finish returning that salute.
Who knows where that story originated? But there was some truth to it.
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A sniper killed First Lieutenant Victor Lee Ellinger, the leader of the Third Platoon in my outfit, C Company. By all standards, he was a veteran, having been in the bush some three months before he was hit. The enemy killed no one else during the brief firefight.
When he went down, the platoon sergeant called the company commander, who ordered me to help Vic’s troops, only to learn he had died while I force-marched my platoon. We had to medevac out two soldiers who suffered heat exhaustion during the long, hard, fast slug I put them through. A forced march is a journey in “quick time,” a fast walk just slightly below a jog.
Throw in a 20-pound backpack in sweltering heat over a distance of half a click (500 meters or half a kilometer), and it could be quite grueling to breathe, let alone march quickly.
I didn’t bargain for this shit! Growing up in the city, I’d gotten into my share of fights, but no one ever shot at me.
But there I was, the man in charge. I never thought of the chaos a sniper could cause by shooting at the leader. He was out to get me, and he had me in his sights. I did not know that then. (I thank God for temporary stupidity. It’s kind of like temporary insanity, but that won’t get you off in a court of law.) I never put the shooting together with the target of the shooter. I thought the sniper was simply pinning down the squad I was leading, not shooting directly at its leader, me.
I moved forward but fell back when another round of fire rang out. Again, I felt some dirt and whatnot spray over me. But I still thought it was us as a group that he was shooting at.
The entire time I served in Vietnam, I never saw the enemy up close and only got glimpses of him in the distance as we’d approach one of his encampments. I’d shoot in the direction of that glimpsed object, hoping I’d hit something or somebody. But I never knew whether it was me or someone else in my platoon who’d end up killing someone. We’d come across a body, and that would be the only time I’d come face-to-face with “Charlie,” the nickname we gave the enemy.
No one I knew in Vietnam ever engaged in hand-to-hand combat. We used no fixed bayonets, and I threw only two hand grenades the time I was in the field, because we hardly ever got close enough to heave ‘em. We’d probably end up hitting a branch and have the explosion backfire had I tossed any more.
Had I known then that a real person was “gunning” for me, I think I would have acted differently. It would have shaken me, instilled more fear in me. I’d be more cautious and more tentative in my actions, following orders, and passing on orders.
Oh, I’d still go a little “berserk” when someone got shot, and revenge sparked a fury that made one’s actions foolishly heroic. I’d charge like a madman when going to help a fallen soldier, as I did when learning that the third platoon had walked into an ambush and needed help from our platoon.
To hell with my safety, there were others worse off, and I believe I speak for every man I ever fought with by saying that any bravery we might have displayed arose from the love and compassion we had for the other guy.
I survived the war in Vietnam. I was never wounded, although I developed a hearing loss from artillery fire and claim it as a disability with the Veterans Administration. There are lots of psychological scars that flare up when stress triggers a traumatic memory. It’s called Post Traumatic Stress. But I am pretty much intact. But what’s keeping this vet alive all these years?
Today, however, I have a question that only a higher command can answer. Why was I spared? Why was another killed and not me? Is this just survivor’s guilt? I could have, perhaps I should have been shot. But why was I not?
More importantly, what have I done with a life that was given to me by Fate or whatever power in the universe you want to name? What am I to do with myself now?
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The following is a conversation about this Blog post shared elsewhere:
Holy crap Michael, I just got the message here and I have to reflect on the story some… what I feel though, and the perspective I take now on “why life” is that it was your choice to live, to survive, and yet only to realize this so many years later. You helped those souls in you charge survive … it all has meaning, it is a free will universe, yet so many abdicate their natural rights … Do you ever speak to the men in your platoon?
I have had no contact with any of the guys I served with except for a fellow lieutenant from Arkadelphia, Ark. He was Charlie Ellis. I spoke to him on the phone a few years ago after getting his number from his mother, who was still alive.
He had a Degree in Economics when I knew him in Vietnam. He was a tall southern boy with a lazy drawl to his voice. He came up through ROTC while Victor Lee Ellinger — the other junior officer — and I went to OCS.
I learned that he had “Found God” and became a lawyer just like me, serving as a public defender somewhere in Arkansas. We talked about our buddy who was killed by a sniper and commented on how moving our visit to the Vietnam Veteran Memorial was for both of us.
— A damn public defender. Still practicing. Still journeying on his spiritual path.
The Universe is amazing, and you can never truly understand the wisdom that is out there!
I felt a lot of healing when I read the following quote from the feminine deity: Moor Jani:
“We all have the capacity to heal ourselves as well as facilitate the healing of others. When we get in touch with that infinite place within us where we are Whole, then illness can’t remain in the body. And because we’re all connected, there’s no reason why one person’s state of wellness can’t touch others. Elevating them and triggering their recovery. And when we heal others, we also heal ourselves and our planet.
There is no separation except in our own minds.”
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Healing is one of the topics for my newest project, a retelling of Jesus’ life as a carpenter’s apprentice at age 20 in the Land of Palestine. I wrote it in less than thirty days as part of a challenge by NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) to complete a novel during the 30 days of November. I completed it today, November 30th, 2014.
The quote above is taken from a book by Anita Moorjani, from whom I just sent an e-mail telling how I used her words to explain the healing process that she described in “Dying to Be Me.” I thought it was appropriate to quote what I imagined a Hindu deity would say about healing. I named the deity Moor Jani. It is spoken by a Buddhist lama named Lobsang, who has taught the young man from Nazareth the secrets of healing through the Reiki process. (I hope to all that is holy that she’ll grant me permission to use her words)
I enjoyed writing this work of fiction.
It may take a while before I can edit it for a full viewing. I would love to send excerpts to anyone willing to offer a critique of the writing. Simply address me here at this site. Your e-mail will appear in my Gmail account, so there will be no breach of confidentiality. (You can even create a fictitious name to use, but please, do not use Donald Duck unless you’re prepared to quack about it.)
Here’s another taste of the manuscript. It’s from the Oracle of Delphi where Jesus and his Greek sidekick, the former slave Michael, have just gotten a prophecy delivered.
Michael stood with eyes wide open as the oracle looked him in the eyes. He blinked and had difficulty in keeping eye contact with her. She spoke two words that seemed to blend together. “Conto . . . Veros,” the young and beautiful woman continued. “You will speak the truth. You will be called the “Singer of Truth.
Conto-Veros. The words rang in his mind as Michael felt a chill and then a warmth overtake his very being. He rolled the words around in his mouth, trying to savor the feel of them. “Con . . . to . . . Ver . . . os,” he whispered to himself, slowly pronouncing each of the four syllables. He liked the sound of it. He liked the feel of it.
But what about “writing well” or “not writing at all“? What could that mean? Only time would tell and that was not to be revealed until many years later.
“All can heal and help facilitate the healing in others.” — Moorjani
Contoveros 