Put another way, the Universe will conspire to bring about what you really want and need in life, even though you may not know it when the Divine Intervention takes place.
Or even like it. The intervention that is. And on first blush, it may even seem bad, but you realize on reflection that it had to have happened for you to progress in life.  Continue reading
September 29th is Michaelmas Day, the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, when everyone with the moniker of Michael will feel the roots extending from our favorite saint. Continue reading
By TEA
It was Saturday morning, May the 19th of 2012. I awoke that early morning feeling well rested. Since the beginning of the new year, I have been working Monday through Thursday, having Fridays off. In the past, when working a full week, my Saturdays were spent sleeping in and catching up on the many hours of sleep lost during the week. 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
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!
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
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
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.
————-
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?
————–
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!
Next, the sweet fragrance of roses mixed with just a slight tinge of oranges enticed my senses while meditating.
This followed the experience yesterday of missing keys mysteriously reappearing as I puzzled through my new life journey of “unnatural” awareness.
This morning, I jokingly referred to my 22-year-old son as my “stupid student” while traveling in the car, and something smacked me on the right side of my head, just slightly below the hairline. I looked up at the sun visor but knew I’d find nothing physical. I realized that some “non-ordinary” force had gently hit me ever so slightly.
I immediately referred to myself as stupid and told a series of self-deprecating jokes, making Nicholas feel better about himself. He chimed in a few of his own, showing me how much wisdom, he actually does have.
We discussed how difficult it is to “let go” of certain beliefs, even when we find ourselves beating our heads against a brick wall, when all we had to do was be open to a less rigid belief, thus enabling us to simply walk around the wall to get to where we want to go.
My second encounter with unseen forces was a more pleasant one. While meditating, I smelled the scent of flowers.
Nature can touch us if we open our hearts to her . . .
It arose during a guided meditation when I was wishing that everyone could be free from danger, while obtaining happiness and good health, while living a life of ease.
I realized that I had been smelling the scent more than a half a dozen times since the day before, and I had commented to my son about it. I hadn’t put the two things together until now.
The “hit upside the head” and the caress of my olfactory senses occurred after a set of keys disappeared and then — like magic — reappeared some 24 hours later. No, I don’t believe it was carried out by a ghost or a poltergeist. My house is not haunted. A Presbyterian priest once blessed it, warding off any evil beings or things, and I believe that blessing still holds.
I saw my keys vanish and then come back. I felt through the touch of my skin the slight pat on my head, and I smelled the lovely fragrance. It was the fragrance that got me thinking of holy things. You see, the Catholic Church calls it the “Odor of Sanctity,” or “Osmogenesia.” They generally refer to the odor that emanates from the bodies of holy people or a holy person’s remains. The duration is brief or persistent; the scent is sweet or floral, such as honey-like, roses, lilies, violets, or incense, according to Sharing Catholic Truth, a spiritual website. (See: Supernatural Scents)
————–
I thought of it after having visited the shrine of Saint Padre Pio outside of Pottstown, PA, where I once worked as a newspaper reporter. Padre Pio was reported to have exuded this “odor of sanctity” at a hotel room in Switzerland where the couple he was praying for were staying. In 1991, more than 10 years after his death, a man who underwent a quadruple bypass awoke from the anesthesia, and his right arm and leg were paralyzed.
He prayed to the saint, and after three fervent days of prayers, he noticed an overwhelming aroma of flowers. When the aroma faded, he felt a sensation in his right leg, and he knew at once Padre Pio had helped to answer his prayer.
Could a benign spirit reach out and touch someone nowadays? Why not? I believe we are spiritual beings occupying a human body. Angels really do exist. I wouldn’t mind being guided by one because I’d know for sure that I was on the right path.
And having one helluva good time while I’m at it!
A spirit touched me today. Or, rather, the spirit touched the pair of jeans I had worn the day before and left on a chair after removing them before going to sleep. When I awoke and put the jeans back on, I got the surprise of my life.
You see, I lost my keys yesterday. I have three keys on a large D-ring that is attached to a loop of the jeans where a belt runs through it. The keys were missing yesterday. I didn’t notice it until bundling up and hiking up the hill to get to my car, where my son had parked it the night before.
“Uh oh,” I said and added a curse word or two. I left my keys in the house.
Back I trudged, getting perturbed at my absent-mindedness. Inside the house, I searched the coffee table where I usually place the keys, but they were missing. Searching the floor and the crevices of the sofa where the cushions separate turned up nary a clue.
I looked in the dining room, the foyer, and even the two bathrooms, but could not locate the missing keys. I even searched the refrigerator and the stove to see if I might have dropped them there.
Eventually, I borrowed a set of keys from my son. He had been using the spare car key, and I went up the hill, fetched the car, and drove to the front of the house to wait for him to take him to work. (I had already searched the car, and my son and I both searched the front lawn, the pavement, and the steps leading up to the house.
Keys were nowhere to be found. Not even in the trash cans I had put out for collection the night before. Could I have dropped them in one of the cans? I might have, I thought.)
With a clearer mind, I decided to do something about my plight. I called a Nissan car repair shop and ordered a new key made. It cost me a hundred dollars. I would still have to get new key-ring cards for the supermarkets and pharmacies, as well as an LA Fitness card and two library cards I use regularly.
The keys manifested back on my jeans the next day. I couldn’t believe it! They were not on the pant loop the day before. I would have felt them when I pulled at the loop. I would have heard them when sitting at a dining table when they collide with a chair. My son — I call him “Eagle Eye” — would have seen them.
They vanished. Twenty-four hours later, they returned.
I don’t know how this all happened.
Nor do I have any explanations for it.
I’m not a nut. I’m not crazy. But something scientists call the “non-ordinary” occurred to me. I’ve been “touched.” By whom or by what, I can’t say, but I believe it is a good source, a good spirit, I f you will.
Now all I have to do is allow those keys to open the door to who knows what my next life’s adventure will be. I hope to have a lot of fun, and I’ll report back to you!
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.”
————-
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
(The following is an excerpt from a book I wrote entitled
“St. Francis of Assisi, A Novel Awakening to Lady Poverty“)
Experiencing the Divine from Within Yourself
I found the truth hidden awayin the crevices of my mind, buried beneath what my religious teachers had told me in classes from age eight to fourteen. Yes, there is only one God, but he can only be experienced from within.
Let me try to explain [Lady Clare]. One need no more than to practice every day by opening oneself to the voice of God. You must be as patient as Job and not try to rush anything. It may take longer for some than for others. But when you experience His Presence, you’ll know without anyone having to tell you what has happened.
I learned this through the practices taught by the holy man Abu Hashim. He was a Jew who studied the Mystical Kabbalah while meditating like a Buddhist monk and converting to Islam as a Sufi worshiper. He showed me the path straight to the divine. He said we all want to be like those in the “State of Israel.” No, I’m not talking about a plot of land or a state that may once have been ruled by kings and judges from the Old Testament.
Meaning of “Israel” is Directly Focused on God
The word Israel simply means “Toward God, toward the Creator.” We want to be in a state of mind that is always directing us toward the Almighty. That’s what the angel with whom Jacob wrestled tried to explain to him. Being unable to defeat Jacob—and possibly put him to death—the angel said from that moment on, Jacob and his offspring would be known by the name of Israel. All who followed Jacob’s lead would be on the path to righteousness and justice.
Somehow, the word was bastardized and came to be used to refer to a homeland of sorts; people wanted desperately to belong to such a land, and they started to call themselves Israelites. It made no sense to anyone who knew the origin of the word, but only the highly spiritually evolved understood it and felt no harm would come by its new usage. Isaac the Blind, the great Kabbalah teacher who shared this knowledge with Abu Hashim, said one day, people of all the nations would learn of this and want to become known as those following the path of Israel.
It is for those following his direction that I am writing this, and I hope at least one in a thousand comes to understand my meager offerings.
“Good Enough” is the lazy man’s way to enlightenment . . . There’s nothing more to do . . . Your job is good enough . . . Your spouse is good enough . . .Your life is good enough . . . Your meditation practice is good enough. . . You don’t need anything more, and what you now have is good enough. — This is all according to a young monk, – Ajahn Khemavaro, who spoke on Impermanence, in a 2008 presentation, “Everything Will Be alright.” Continue reading
While growing up in a Catholic School, I met all kinds of nuns. Some I liked more than others. I was kind of like the class clown, or a class-clown wannabe, and got called out by many of the good teachers wearing the black coverings with the bullet-proof white vests covering their chests. I went to Saint Ludwig’s, a church school in what was then a predominantly German neighborhood of North Philadelphia called “Brewerytown.”
I never did like Sister Saint Clare, but I did like Sister St. Leonard, even though she had made my brother repeat first grade and was forever marked in God’s permanent record as one of those “left-behind.”
Sister Saint Clare bullied me when she learned I had played hooky. She tried to get me to “squeal” on who I had stayed out of school with. But I never snitched on him, even after she forced me to the brink of the top of the second-floor school stairway and over the steps for a tumble I will never forget. See: Sister Saint Clare knocks me for a loop.
Sister Josephine Frances was my all-time favorite, even though she smacked me once when I thought it wasn’t right. She had left the classroom and told us not to talk. It was something that hardly anyone followed. At least I didn’t, even though I noticed that most kids read their books.
When she returned, she asked which one of us had talked. I was unafraid. Like I said, I really liked her. She made me proud of my Greek heritage when she taught us in her fourth-grade class about the ancient Greeks and how much our Western World owed to those great men and women from thousands of years ago. I saw myself as one of those who, incidentally, would never tell a lie.
I was one of only a handful — all boys, I seem to recall — who raised our hands in answer to the good sister’s questions. Well, without further ado, she marched up to each and every one of us sitting in one of those wooden chairs with those little wooden desks with an empty hole across the desk-top that once held an ink bottle, and smacked us.
I mean, “smacked” us. It was loud. And, it hurt! But not as much as what happened next.
Pure unadulterated shame and embarrassment came over me. For the first time in my life, I felt my face turning red. You see, I had sinned, and the Angel of the Lord descended upon me and struck me with the wrath of God.
It was devastating. Yet, some 50-odd years later, I still hold that holy nun in the highest regard, and I’ve never been afraid of admitting my mistakes. I could have gone the other way. I could have become someone who would lie by simply saying nothing, which I believe many others might have done. And some still do . . .
Truth is the truth, no matter what age you’re confronted with it, I learned back then. I feel Sister Josephine Frances helped me to see that and pass a test of a lifetime.
Dream of Writing a Book about to Come True
As I stand on the precipice of my literary journey, the dream of writing a book feels closer than ever. The countless hours spent brainstorming ideas, developing characters, and crafting intricate plots have finally begun to take shape. I can see the pages of my story unfolding before me, each chapter brimming with potential and passion.
This transformative experience has ignited a fire within me, motivating me to pour my emotions and experiences onto the page. Friends and family, too, have become my pillars of support, encouraging me to embrace my creativity and share my unique voice with the world. With every word I write, the reality of my dream comes into focus, and I am filled with anticipation for the moment when my book will finally be in the hands of eager readers, ready to explore the world I have created.
I am about to become an Author!
Well, a “Published Author” that is.
I just learned that my book about Francis of Assisi, a historic novel, will be available at Amazon sometime in the next two months, September and October (2014). Writing it was a true labor of love. I mixed in Catholicism with Sufism and lots of Buddhism. I also introduced Francis, aka Giovanni di Bernadone, his real name by the way, to the Wisdom of Kabbalah and a belief in what I call “angel therapy.”
For all my legal friends not yet indicted or spending time in jail, I threw in the Rule against Perpetuity. Don’t ask me what it means. I never quite understood it in law school, but it sounded so good, I created a way for Clare, Francis’s female sidekick and saint-in-training, to use the legal maneuvering to keep his first-person manuscript hidden from public view until a fellow discovered it in a castle of some small Greek island.
Michael J Contos, writing under his father’s name, “Contoveros,” discovered the manuscript and brought it to the attention of the world.
You can read the excerpt from St. Clare’s preface here:
Francis of Assisi, written in his own words
Enjoy!
Oh yeah . . . The name of the book is “Francis of Assisi, a Novel Awakening to Lady Poverty.”
Though many books have been written about Saint Francis of Assisi, none have put him in such a human light as this novel. Francis of Assisi, while taking a few liberties along the way, tells the story of Saint Francis’s journey through darkness and war and into the light. Readers learn about the struggles Saint Francis must overcome, and about his trials with his father and with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Contoveros creates for us a Saint Francis who is entirely tangible but inspirational on a spiritual level. From the very beginning, we are fighting for the patron saint of animals and small critters. We are there to experience the vision of “Lady Poverty” alongside him, and by the novel’s end, we understand him and his vision more fully.
Facing death, St Francis of Assisi recalls his flight from his father’s oppression and how he dreamed of becoming a warrior only to be thrown from his horse in battle and witness a mass slaughter before being taken captive and falsely imprisoned in a dungeon. Because of this, he suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a malady he struggles with all of his life to overcome.
Upon his release from prison, Lady Poverty appears in a vision to the young “King of the Revelers,” inspiring him to change his life and embark on a journey that leads to a spiritual awakening still sought after today.
As a Vietnam War veteran, Contoveros seems to have an innate understanding of some of the struggles Saint Francis of Assisi faced roughly eight hundred years ago. Both Contoveros and his hero suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of war. Later, both sought forms of spiritual awakening.
An inactive attorney, Contoveros has a master’s degree in history. In preparation for writing A Novel Awakening to Lady Poverty, he researched the thirteenth century and read multiple accounts of Saint Francis of Assisi to piece together the character formed in this novel.
Raised in the Roman Catholic Church, but a student of Buddhism, the Sufi, and Kabbalah, Contoveros now sees spirituality in a new light. He is an admirer of Siddhartha and, like many others, a seeker of answers in this troubled world.
(Question 2 on Hope)
You may also have experienced this kind of hope, (See https://contoveros.wordpress.com/?p=12505&preview=true) but not thought of it in those terms. Think of a time when you felt sure you were going to attain a lofty goal, even though the path to the goal was not apparent. That is the hope that comes from your being. Describe this feeling of certainty in your journal. – Deepak Chopra 21-Day Meditation Experience (Feeling Hope) I was a buck private in training as a soldier in Fort Dix, NJ, when I had a vision, or what Zen Buddhists call a “satori” or moment of clarity of what I needed to do with my life.
I was a buck private in training as a soldier in Fort Dix, NJ, when I had a vision, or what Zen Buddhists call a “satori” or moment of clarity of what I needed to do with my life.
I needed and wanted to write a book.
Not just any book, but one where I was the hero. Well, hero may not be the right word. In the book, I was to be the center of attention, while everything I’d write about would involve me and things that I had some sort of contact with. I used the model of the Bible as a guide.
I figured that the greatest book that there ever was should be the map and framework for my book. I’d be just like Christ, but not face crucifixion or circumcision. There was a driving force behind this idea. The idea stayed with me from the moment I was nineteen years old until I finished working for a living and found the leisure time to write about what I had discovered over the years.
I didn’t know that I would write a book when I started dabbling with a Blog. I started writing on WordPress the same month that Uncle Dom had died in 2009, and I guess I haven’t stopped since then. The blog became my way of expressing what I was seeing around me and what was happening to influence me. I learned that most of what I was learning was something I already knew, but had forgotten.
I think that much of spiritual knowledge is like that. We don’t get our “smarts” from someone or some book out there. We get it from inside, where true wisdom, love, and hope reside. It takes some of us a lifetime, however, to realize that. All we needed to do was to become as silent as Dominick, smile, and hope to visit that wise child inside who has never left us. The child becomes the guide and offers us the inspiration to set goals and to eventually achieve them.
You’re reading this right now, and that goes to show you that I achieved another step toward my goal. You can do it once you identify your goal and stick to it as if your life depended on it.
Your spiritual life will depend on it for you to follow through for your salvation.
We introduced a new understanding of hope today. We want to build a sense of hope that is a force of change that comes from a feeling of certainty and well-being within, rather than an anxious kind of hope that vaguely wishes for things to turn out well. Write about an experience you may have had with this stronger kind of hope. – Deepak Chopra (Day 6 — Feeling Hope)
I don’t think you can have a future or any type of “end product” without hope. I see hope more as a process, a living force that flows from day-to-day, hour by hour, and minute by minute. We hope for something that will come into existence in some future time. Yet the feeling we get through the act of hope occurs in the present.
It’s like living. No, it is living, which is living in the present moment while expending energy in a real certainty that there will be answers for what we hope for tomorrow. For instance, I hope to publish a book. Actually, I have five books in which I hope to publish over the next several months. That’s ten hopeful wishes, so to speak. I am in the process of self-publishing, and I hope to obtain an end product sometime later this year.
My hope is that the books will be well-received and, more importantly, that someone reads them. I hope that they will inspire others and reveal truths that I’ve learned through a mystical journey I started some six years ago. That’s when I retired from “regular” work, and I found my true passion in writing. I like to say that I traded in a legal career to return to a writing one, this time, not as a newspaper reporter, but a reporter on and about life!
Since September 2009, I had hoped that I could offer as much compassion and love as the monsignor did at my Uncle Dominick‘s funeral. Uncle Dom was the last surviving blood relative from either of my parents’ sides. He was the baby of the family and had babysat me when I was sent to my grandmother’s house to avoid any harm. My mother, Dom’s half-sister, had suffered from postpartum depression, and I was shipped off to Mays Landing, NJ, from Philadelphia, PA, to prevent any danger to me and to provide the much-needed help for my frail and sickly mother.
Did someone see some hope in me? I like to think that Grandma Hagel did. Whenever someone asked me if I knew who provided me with unconditional love, I automatically think of her. Yet, I remember very little about her. I guess there was (is) a feeling about the times I had contact with her that lends itself to such an impression.
Uncle Dom was the quiet type. He served in the navy during World War II and “inherited” Grandma’s house after he got married and began raising his own children. He married one of the toughest women I have ever encountered, Aunt Frances. She was the bossy type who always seems to control every situation. And if she couldn’t control it, she found a way to influence it by getting to the guy or girl in charge!
I got hope for my spiritual path when the cleric at Uncle Dom’s funeral butchered Aunt Frances’ name. No one messed with Aunt Frances, and I took it as a sign for a drastic change in my life. I figured that I was as spiritual as that priest, and that I could prove it.
Of course, I had meditated for more than a year, having learned mindfulness meditation in a Veterans Administration clinic and at a weekly meditation session with a Zen teacher. Hope infused in me after I prayed for Uncle Dom, meditated, and rose to the standing position with the others in the church. We stood to exit the pew where we had been either seated or were kneeling. It was time to receive Holy Communion.
Communion is something I can’t receive anymore. You see, I got married “outside” the church, and I would have to get a dispensation from the pope or get remarried “in” the church to take on that sacrament. It is one of the worst sins the Catholic Church has imposed on its faithful, and I’m sure it has driven out — and is still keeping out — many Catholics who are good people. These are people like me who had simply met other good folks of different religious backgrounds and agreed to accept the spouse’s choice of where to get married.
I got married in a Presbyterian Church by a Methodist minister named Michele Wright Bartlow, the sister of my soon-to-be wife, the former Wendy Wright.
I hope that someday a pope like Pope Francis will grant a blanket absolution for those of us who chose to say our marriage vows somewhere other than in a Catholic church. I’d “go back” to the church if he waved a magic wand and said all was forgiven. I would be able to receive communion again and not have to pretend like I did during the funeral for Uncle Dom.
————–
So, I marched backward and then made my way around the church, checking out some of the statues on display at various sections of the House of God. My hope was that no one would take offense, and from what I noticed, no one did. No one has ever commented about it, and I guess my hope helped to create a happy ending of sorts.
I became more spiritual and have not really looked back except to reflect on how far along this path a sinner like me has been able to travel. See, there is hope for everybody if they seek it out. It freed me up to write, and I haven’t stopped since that fateful day.
Stay tuned for more hope in tomorrow’s post. That’s when I’ll try to “wright a wrong“, so to speak. Or just click the post at right below.)
I just finished writing 73,000 words about Francesco, the young man from Assisi who overcame post-traumatic stress from battles, as well as a year-long imprisonment, before being ransomed by his rich mercantile father. Continue reading
I’ve been away from you for less than 4 hours, and I can’t stand it. I miss you.
What has come over me? I get so lonely when I’m not with you, and feel such a shallow emptiness. You are so filling that I don’t really take notice of your presence until your presence is gone. My tank runs out of gas, it voids itself of all energy, and the only thing I have left to get me through is the memory of the two of us together and how we will reunite tomorrow.
But tomorrow is so long away. I don’t think I’ll make it through the night after having spent the last three days in the sunshine and in the rain, marching to the beat of our own reality, our own world created with the mingling of our breath, our souls, our mutual loving touches.
Let me rest. That’s all I can do. Rest up and hope the hours go by so swiftly. Think of me when you get a moment. Please keep me in your mind’s eye when you see something that might remind you of our time together and the joy that we helped to manifest in each other.
Let these poor, insignificant words of my heartfelt yearning find you happy and content while away from me and remind you of your conquest, your victory, your winning of my heart.
You had my heart the moment you tapped me on the shoulder in the Temple of Love and asked where we could find Enlightenment. You my dear, provided the light to shine through my soul’s darkness and to remind me of a life of purpose and meaning by simply being able to love unconditionally once again.
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!
A friend of mine is “into” Angels. “Suspend your disbelief,” he told me, explaining how belief in angels re-materialized into his life recently. I knew at that moment that the resistance he had spoken of was puffing out its chest and stepping between me and the computer screen where his words appeared.
(Written by Melanie Kriebel)
The Maiden of Athena to the Foolish Knight:
Is this not, yet another spiritual practice for you?
For me too.
Am I among the “Chosen?” Will I be one of those who make the “cutoff” at the end when the proverbial bill finally gets to be paid?
I don’t know. If you had asked me some five years ago, I’d tell you to hit the road, Jack. I’m not into any of that Doomsday Stuff. The so-called “Chosen People” were the Jews, right? Look what happened to them.
And don’t the Jehovah’s Witnesses folks believe that a couple of hundred thousand of them will disappear from the earth at the time of the Rapture? And what about some old-fashioned Presbyterians? Didn’t Calvin or one of their leaders claim to be among the chosen few?
I’d tell you that this is the stuff that kooks dream up for superstitious old ladies and men who have nothing better to do than face their own mortality, hoping they could miraculously get to Heaven if they just turned their lives around in the last years of their lives. They’ll believe in anything or anyone that could offer them salvation with a money-back guarantee!
But something happened to me. I felt like I got hit upside the head with a spiritual sledgehammer from some animated cartoon. I heard a voice ask me if I was ‘squandering away my life,” and it scared the hell out of me. I looked at the world around me and saw that nothing had “staying power.” I’d have fun and get my kicks from the old standbys: wine, women, and songs.
But they held no meaning anymore. I’d drunk too much wine, my wife fell down the steps and suffered a traumatic brain injury, leaving me nothing but sad songs of days gone by to sing about. I hit bottom and found there was nothing on this planet that could inspire me to get my butt off the ground, and my head outta my butt.
I got the call. I got the spiritual call. And, more importantly, I answered that call. And, I’ve been seeking answers ever since, sharing some tidbits of crazy wisdom with people I feel might be of like mind and what I call a “what-the-hell-do-I-have-to-lose” desperation.
If you’ve read this far, you might be one of ‘em. The Chosen, that is. You don’t think you got to this point in your life on your own, do you? You were knocked to the ground on purpose. You were forced to “Call on a Resource” you thought had given up on your wretched personhood. You could either sink into major depression, drugs, and/or the negative lifestyle you had led, or let go.
You let go, didn’t you? Just as I had to, with no assurance that tomorrow would be any more secure or stable as today had turned out to be.
I had learned to take a step without moving my foot, as Rumi once suggested. I could only do it by completely surrendering my old self, the ego-self that controlled my life and got me on a bridge to nowhere with no guide to help navigate away from that dead-end.
It was in the process of “letting go” that I discovered a path similar to the one you’re walking. We could never have reached this point without first humbling ourselves and admitting we needed help. We needed something the world couldn’t provide, and so we looked beyond this world. We’d be ridiculed, barely tolerated, and our sanity questioned as even well-intentioned family and friends would whisper about our loved one finally going off the deep end.
I removed myself from a reality that focuses only on the material, that judges you only by your successes and the riches you’ve acquired, the medals you gained, the reputation you so carefully strove to keep up. None of this meant anything anymore. I wanted the freedom to simply “BE.”
I needed the Divine in, and of, the Cosmos to become my dearest lover, my comforting parent, my faithful friend. I found all of these – this trinity of engaging partners – through a sincere and contrite prayer, and the trust that the prayer would be answered. That you and I could grow into our purpose for, and in, life by giving up our will for the Will of God; by becoming corrected as prayed for by Kabbalists; by celebrating like a laughing Buddhist monk when he realizes Karma has finally ripened for him to always act in his Buddha nature.
I got picked to play on a team that can’t lose. What are you waiting for? You can join me by simply leaving your “self” outside the playground. You’ve been chosen! Now, help others you know who could practice with us in this game.
It took several hours for the effects of the Sweat Lodge ceremony to kick in, but when it did, I realized the control I always thought I needed was not in my hands, but in what the Greeks called the Fates; the Christians, God; and the Buddhists, Karma.
A Divine source, referred to by some as the “Force,” the Divine Feminine, the Creator, has dealt a hand to play with our own free will. We get to choose which cards to keep and the ones to discard. By standing pat or by seeking new ones to “change our luck” or to improve our hand, we cast our lot to the future. None of us expects to lose or to face tragedy or a financial crisis. We hope for improvement, to enrich ourselves through our card-playing skills and years of studying the game of life.
In the end, the winner is not necessarily the one who drew the highest hand – a royal straight flush versus a pair of kings and deuces. It is the player that can place the bet, and deal with the loss or win with equanimity, that emerges the victor. There is no win, there is no loss. There is just an awareness of the game and how to view it from a state of grace, the right frame of mind, the right attitude. All disappointments arise and end.
All roller-coaster thrills must end. In understanding that everything that comes into my existence must someday leave, I can live with its impermanent nature more easily. Treat it the same whether it is good or bad, foul or fresh, holy or unholy. The moment of pleasure and the moment of dissatisfaction will pass. Each will arise and reach its crescendo of joy or sadness, and then each will fall, dissipating and returning from whence it came, leaving naught but a memory we can choose to relive or to drop if similar conditions arise to trigger its recall later.
None of this was clear when the sweat poured out of me as 10 men and women crawled on hands and knees into the Sweat Lodge outside of Pottstown, PA. We took part in a ceremony honoring the “Great Spirit,” while offering prayers to the four corners of the earth and beyond. We sweated as the lodge leader spread bits of sage, tobacco, and other herbs onto the red-hot coals, causing an eruption of tiny flames that shot upwards and out of the stones but remained safely in a pit dug earlier to contain a total of some 15 hot, glowing rocks.
Each one had been baked in a much bigger pit built a slight distance outside of the lodge, where a stone-bearer had been heating them over a slow-burning fire for several hours. Two to four rocks were requested for each “sweat,” or prayerful focus in a given direction. We offered three prayers each for the West, the South, and the North.
Then just as the sweat seemed to be unbearable for the likes of me, the number of prayers for the East increased to five, six, seven, eight, and beyond . . . I lowered my head to the floor of the lodge, taking in the cooler air and praying a silent prayer that all the prayers would stop so that I could get the hell out of there!
The prayers did stop, and we offered a blanket thanksgiving for all. I believe, however, that my silent prayer even helped to cleanse and purify me, removing and burning away the hellish traces of lower, base nature.
Hours later, I revolted against a group of Born-Again Christians. All of them were what I called “lily whites.” The men wore handsomely tailored suits, and the women gorgeous dresses with just the right amount of jewelry. All appeared with the greatest tans that money and lots of free time at the beach could offer.
“I don’t belong here,” I cried to my partner in crime, Melanie, a young Hispanic woman whose mother was raised in Colombia and passed on the natural shade of tan we ethnic types have acquired — her from South America, and me from the southern European countries like my father’s Greek homeland. She had left the sweat lodge and agreed to go with me on this next leg of my spiritual journey
“They’re too white for me,” I said, pointing at their pale faces, their blonde heads, and the white hairs of their elderly wise ones. “I haven’t seen one Black,” I added. “We’re their token brown-skinned people.” Eventually, she helped me to overcome my resistance, and we entered the church even though Melanie was still a little wet from swimming in the pool after the sweat and unable to change out of the bra and other underthings that had gotten soaked!
There we were. Two “Recovering” Catholics, walking into the Valley Forge Baptist Church to take in the solo performance of the daughter of dear retired friends I had made while breakfasting at an IKEA restaurant in Conshohocken. They waved to us, and Melanie and I parted the sea of white folks and sat in a pew behind the proud parents. Their daughter played divinely, and despite an apparent ban against applauding in such a refined church of God, the audience cheered her and I whistled as loudly as the most boisterous fan at a Phillies/Mets game.
A wonderful choir next offered every one the Sound of Angels. That was followed by a group of teens who had recently attended a church-sponsored camp in North Carolina who explained to the thousands of congregational members how Christ had entered into their lives and changed them forever. Each boy reminded me of a miniature “preacher-in-training” with the fervor of zealot for God, while the girls talked of the gentler side of a divine forgiveness, unconditional love, and spiritual camaraderie. Then Satan raised his ugly head.
No, Lucifer made no appearance, although one of the adult preachers brought up his name while chastising the youth for listening to the foulest of foul music provided in the world today. He asked for money to develop Christian music as an alternative to evil sounds my generation had been warned against when Ed Sullivan chose not to show Elvis Presley’s lower parts on national television and “race songs” — those performed by Black artists and Doo Wop groups years ago got banned in Boston.
I couldn’t wait to escape, bid farewell to the lovely white-haired couple who invited us, and put a distance between them and my sinful self. It was while I was drinking water in my car and reflecting on the day’s events that divine insight struck me like the proverbial bolt of lightning.
God and the Divine Spirit of the Cosmos are the same one we all talk about, but we use different languages to praise and worship. He or she is the clear light, the Buddha Nature existing in all that we can tap into when we want to live a life that Jesus lived, or that Mohammed said was possible if we but give up our will and let a more powerful Will control the major part of our lives. Yes, we still have free choice, free will.
But we know where our internal moral compass is directing us to go. It tells us what is good or bad at the moment and that all we need do is seek the stillness and silence where a “Shekinah” — what the Hebrew language calls the “Feminine Side of God” — dwells. She is always available to guide us. Seek her out, this great spirit, this energy, this Great Vibration, and give up all resistance.
You’ll find out you can do it with no sweat, and with no loss of anything God hadn’t planned for your personal purpose in life.
The thought of going to prison never bothered me. I’d survive and flourish behind bars, where I’d have more than enough time to reflect and write which I have found is my true love in life.
No, I could kill without worrying about the consequences. It would be my first offense. I am certified as a Vietnam veteran with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and I don’t see any judge or jury putting me to death for the crime.
All of this went through my mind when I was waiting at the train platform, and a rather tall, white guy walked in front of me. I was standing near the tracks. I was close enough and in line with others standing on either side of me that I never thought someone could make their way between me and the tracks. But the man did. He walked around me. He stood directly in front of me. No one else stood that close. I recall thinking how totally inappropriate and rude his actions were.
I know how to kill, having been trained in the infantry and as a parachutist who learned not to care about pain. I got used to it, and bared up under it so many times, it became almost second nature to welcome it during a new and challenging task. Like murder.
No, I don’t know any Kung Fu or any martial arts. But I could break the man’s neck from behind. And, if that failed, I would wrestle him to the ground and die before letting him get up as I smashed his head again and again on the platform, caring not a whit about the mess I’d make. I’m strong. More importantly, I’m strong-willed.
He deserved to die, I rationalized and actually saw myself as a champion of the underdogs who play by the rules on train platforms. You have to honor another person’s space. You can’t stand too close to another person until or unless you see the train pulling up, and everyone tightens up the ranks, bunching together to stand at the spot you believe the train steps will come to a halt.
Why break such a rule? Why place yourself in front of someone else just because you’re taller than them are? Or younger? Or slicker? Someone like me may just kill you and use the opportunity to leave behind a staid and predictable life that’s losing whatever meaning it once may have had.
My action could be considered justifiable in a weird sort of way. No, not in a legal sense, but in a Karmic sense, if you know what I mean. I’d create some negative karma but prevent others from getting such negativity in their thoughts and desires to kill as much as I wanted to kill him. I saved them and the rest of all sentient beings a large and cumulative amount of negative karma, that I could be considered a saint in some religions.
I bring this up now only because I asked the Universe to correct my old way of life. Certain actions occurred in response to my wishes.
But instead of acting, I became a “watcher.” I was no longer the actor, but someone above myself looking down on my speech, my thoughts, my relations with others and events that became ripened by different causes and conditions.
No, I killed no one. But I entered a state of mind where I saw a different reality. A reality that has always been there but was blocked by my mind. My mind kept me busy with one thought after another: a fear here, an anxiety there. It jumped from an emotional thought from my past to a future where nothing, but catastrophes existed. And then my mind would race, with me having no control of it.
I feel better now. I control my mind even in the most disastrous moments of life. Who’s to say they’re disastrous? Not me. Not anymore. I’ve gained the equanimity to treat the glorious and the profane the same way. As an observer. Not a slave to emotional and useless thoughts. Just an observer of the thoughts.
Try it.
What is a monk to do when he is lonely? When he is blue?
When you reach that low point where you feel you are the loneliest person in the world, who or what do you turn to for relieve? 
The Dalai Lama says, “Don’t scratch the itch.” Better still, he cautions, “Don’t have the itch in the first place.” I paraphrase His Holiness‘ words, but not their meaning. * Don’t have the itch in the first place.
That may be easy for a virgin entering monastic life as an adolescent. But what do you tell a grown man or woman who had not entered their spiritual path until experiencing the warmth, comfort and love in the arms of truly caring and compassionate mate?
Something so good could not be so bad.
Even years later when one has only a dim memory of giving oneself completely to another so that both could share the ecstasy that Buddhist say comes only upon death — and in sexual union! It can be an out-of-body experience that unites, shattering the dualistic mind, if only for a second or for a lifetime.
Should I give up this yearning for the mere touch of another? Should I mark it up as just another depravity on my part, a defilement that my mind causes in my dreams and my waking hours?
Why has such an overwhelming sense of sexuality come over me as I draw nearer and nearer to spirituality?
(By clicking on the following sentences, you will be linked with my book “Ithaca Insights.”)
I’ll return to my cave after the verdict.
* * * *
*(If one is itchy, then one scratches himself.
Better than any number of scratches
However, it is when one does not itch at all.”
— His Holiness the Dalai Lama quoting Nagarjuna, the Indian scholar, with a three-line thought on the question of Erotic Love.
I’m so scared because I don’t know what to do, nor who to turn to. Flashes of insights, intuition, and a “knowing” that borders on the Psychic have arisen in me and I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse.  Continue reading
He’s at it again. This time, the Friar Pope is championing what I call the “untouchable class” of Catholics, the single mother, also known throughout Christianity’s Dark Ages as the “UN – WED MOTHER.”
(Funny, but those Dark Ages seem like only yesterday!)  Continue reading
There’s a passage in Mark’s Gospel in which Jesus’ disciples complain that someone — one who is not one of them — is casting out demons in Jesus’ name. It seems that fundamentalists of all ages have held a belief that there was only one way to get to the kingdom; only one way, and that was through Jesus.  Continue reading
How could I – a mother of two with a 10-year drug problem – be facing a life sentence for something stupid I did at the local Rite Aid store? Continue reading
On February 5th, 2012, a friend who calls herself, the Frugal Xpat, commented:
I didn’t respond to the comment until now, but I want to share how everyone could enjoy this exercise the Frugal Expat spoke of in Daily Meditation Desperately Needed. As she describes her life’s quest, she is on “An expat’s journey in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.” Continue reading
Shifting into cruise control, I let myself glide through many of life’s activities nowadays. I relax, take several deep breaths, and seek a place inside where there are no thoughts, no worries, and no frets.
I’ve already done all the heavy lifting. I planned the contours of my day, knowing when I could go on autopilot and when I needed to let the left hemisphere of my brain take over. You know, when I need to calculate, navigate, and/or investigate, I turn to the so-called “thinking” process. But I don’t let thoughts interrupt my breakfast while I eat.
I awake with no problem and shave, shower, and dress myself, making only minor decisions in these efforts, particularly choosing which clothes to put on. Who needs to think while running water, flossing teeth, or flushing a toilet?
After getting into the car and driving to my preplanned destination of work or play, I need not think of the future or the past, but just the moment in front of me. This is my time, not someone else’s time, who would use it as unwisely as I used to by daydreaming, recalling past events, or projecting a thousand possibilities of things that could happen in the future that I had absolutely no control over.
A soft calm spreads throughout my body. Stiff and sore parts start to loosen up and relax. I have no need or wish to be anywhere but where I am at the moment.
I seek this plane of awareness when I read intently or listen deeply. When I’m in this “zone,” I retain more from a book or article, and hear not only spoken words from a speaker, but more of the meaning someone is trying to say without words.
When I free myself of the noisy thoughts and outside interferences, I become more present for the environment I’ve chosen to focus on, be it reading or writing, laughing or crying, or simply standing or sitting while I wait to engage in my next series of “actions.” I am more “there” than ever before because I purposely “let go” of all that has little if anything to do with the “now.”
I focus better on the job, finding more clarity on what’s needed and what’s superfluous. There’s a great word for you, superfluous. How much of what we do, say, and think is just that? Superfluous. How easy life could be if we eliminated more and more of the unnecessary add-ons that we thought so important at one time, but discovered never added one iota to our overall well-being.
Breathing in, I am at home with myself. Breathing out, I am at home with you and all the love, compassion, and sense of equanimity that the best families could ever offer.
I send affection to motorists cut off by a speeding car that winds in and out of lanes. I feel for the driver who was never told by the operator of a car in front that that operator was going to turn, despite what appears to be working lights that turn on and off when you press the turn signal lever up or down.
My heart goes out to you who have observed the speed limit, inching no more than seven miles an hour over a 55-mph limit when someone in a pickup truck rides your tail even though the driver can simply pull into the open right lane and pass your car on the left.
I used to curse out those I believed were inconsiderate drivers. You know the aggressive types that always seemed to have more important business to attend to than you did. Too often, I’d let anger push me to the extreme, and I’d speed up to show ’em what a speedster they had met on the road. It was road rage, pure and simple. The more I focused on how I’d been insulted, the more the rage would become inflamed, causing me to see red and not care about the defensive driving skills I swore I would practice just a few minutes earlier when I was feeling more level-headed.
Then it dawned on me. I could feel compassion for the so-called reckless driver. I know what it is like to be in such a hurry. I’ve been there. I’d feel the world would come to an end should I miss an appointment, be late for a job, or fail in the impression I wanted to make by arriving early enough to greet someone.
I always had a reason to speed. There were so many important things I had to do, to finish, to check off that “to-do” list to feel my life was worthwhile, that I was accomplished, that I am accomplishing . . . something.
I try to understand how the person traveling in the car trapped himself or herself by his or her own expectations, the desires and attachments to concepts and ideas that were no more real than the make-believe “deadline” they have imposed on themselves. No, there has never been a line that we needed to reach to prevent someone from falling down dead.
We’ve created this illusion. We’ve invested much of our lives into reaching certain milestones, destinations, and goals. That is all well and good, until we enslave ourselves to becoming totally “outcome-focused.” How you get there doesn’t matter, just as long as you carry out that task wherever it might be. Too often, it doesn’t matter who we hurt or cut off on the road we have traveled.
The process itself, I have learned, is just as important as, if not more important than, crossing the finish line. We spend the greatest part of our lives in some sort of “process” to get something.
We are squandering away that time if we focus on nothing but the ending. Why not learn to enjoy the road while we’re riding? Enjoy the lay of the land, the smooth macadam where the tires roll on following a bumpy part of the highway. Breathe in the air, the scented smell of that green-tree air-freshener of mint or the dark brown one that smells like brand new leather seats.
Sip from your cup of hot coffee or cool water. Listen to music or the beautiful sounds of silence that help you to still the mind so that you can live through your senses now, not at the end of the road. It is in the moment that you can find true compassion. Seek it inside, and, if you’re lucky, you can pick it up as a hitch-hiker on a road less traveled.
I’ve done what I have done and everyone can be satisfied with my efforts, including — and most importantly — me. Continue reading
While Neil Armstrong was taking a giant leap for all mankind, I had taken a small step toward adulthood one month after the moon landing, and I had no one to thank for it except my brother, who encouraged me to aim for the stars in becoming an Officer and a Gentleman in the Army of the United States of America.
I had weathered the worst six months of my life – worse even than my later combat duty in the Vietnam War – as I underwent the rigorous training in Officers’ Candidate School. We ran everywhere we went, and when we couldn’t run anymore, we’d run in place, waiting in line for chow outside the mess hall, or to use the latrine.
I was the second-youngest in a company of some 200 recruits – carrying a minimum rank of Specialist Five (E-5) – who learned tactics and survival skills and how to endure under the harshest conditions while developing leadership qualities. The youngest ones were targeted for even more physical and psychological drills because of our age.
The company commander once ordered me to do some 400 situps in a sleeping bag, relenting only after he got tired of counting, and I tore parts of my butt apart from sliding it back and forth against the ground so much. I’m surprised I didn’t tear a hole through the bag, but instead of forcing me out of the program, it encouraged me not to quit and to take whatever he was willing to dish out. At age 20, with nothing but a high school diploma, I earned the respect of several with college and graduate degrees who might have changed their minds about my leading troops.
Those of us who made it filed out of the auditorium at Fort Benning, Ga., having been addressed by some old, weathered colonel who appeared to be in his 70s and was still jumping out of airplanes – his latest count reaching more than 600 jumps! He looked a little crazy, “gung-ho crazy,” if you know what I mean. His eyes seemed permanently fixed wide open; he was jumpy and alert to the smallest sound or movement nearby. I would compare the hyperawareness and sensitivity I’d get from post-traumatic stress years later to his demeanor and makeup.
But on this day, August 22, 1969, my oldest brother had prepared a ceremony to take place outside the doors of the graduation hall. Dressed in his regular working uniform as an E-6 (Staff Sergeant), he carefully removed two metal bars from a cardboard box. We called them “butter bars,” the yellow metal bars symbolizing the rank of Second Lieutenant, the lowest rank in the Army’s officer corps.
So many things went through my mind as I stood at attention, looking straight ahead, hoping my dress-uniform hat was affixed properly. I didn’t want to be out of order in any way, shape, or form at this time in my life.
My oldest brother, six years my senior, was about to pin the bars on my shoulder, officially welcoming me to a world where I would become an officer and a gentleman. I did not know then what the designation by an Act of Congress would actually mean. That would come later in Vietnam, when I’d see mortar fire hit and wound half a squad I was leading; when a Viet Cong sniper would shoot and kill Lt. Vic Ellinger, one of only three lieutenants in our combat infantry company; or as two soldiers under another lieutenant’s command would forget where they had placed their claymore mine trip-wire and walk into it, killing themselves.
That was all in the future, along with the PTSD that would raise its ugly head some 25 years after the war. It wouldn’t be all bad, particularly right after being discharged, when this young veteran would use a sense of failure to achieve success in academics, getting degrees in journalism and history before finding his other life’s calling years later as a public defender trial lawyer after obtaining a Juris Doctor Degree.
I knew none of this as my brother George S. Contos fastened the metal bars to my uniform jacket, stepped back, and brought his right hand briskly to his forehead, saluting the superior officer that I had become.
Nothing in my life could compare to that shining moment.
I remembered how to fly this morning. The first thing I needed for liftoff, I recalled, was good, solid grounding. Everything must be secured and brought to a complete stand-still before I could ever dream of taking off into the air. Continue reading
I didn’t want to go back to Omega Institute this year. Each time I travelled to this land of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, I’d get high from the holistic experience. But then I’d change into an Ichabod Crane feeling chased by the Headless Horseman, who’d tell true-life stories that caused so much pain I couldn’t hold it inside. Continue reading
Death entered my life recently and I’ve felt so alive with its presence. Continue reading
There’s something in it that resonates with me. In my private moments, I try my best to connect with it, but once I start to analyze it, it vanishes. Continue reading
I get such a high while exercising that I can’t imagine why I haven’t done this more often in life. Continue reading
There is a tradition in Eastern philosophies where you’re taught to view each person and other sentient being as if he, she – or it is your mother. I never knew how nurturing this could be until I allowed the child in me to reciprocate and bask in the most secure and loving place. Continue reading
After chanting a non-English mantra for some time, I finally learned its definition and discovered a gem of wisdom while contemplating its meaning. Meditating will never be the same, and I want to share with others a little of the enlightenment it’s provided me.
Reality shifted on me the other day, and it helped me realize that I have more control than my “resifted” thoughts allowed me to see. Now, with a “time-control outlook,” I can try to change my world for the better.  Continue reading
I don’t understand all the fuss that Catholic universities and hospitals are raising over providing health care for women that includes mandatory birth control provisions. Why not let “Practicing Catholics” follow the teachings of their church to “opt out” for the coverage, while permitting non-Catholics what doctors and women’s groups say is a health benefit?  Continue reading
It’s time for my disappearing act to begin. I close my eyes, wave an imaginary magic wand, and slowly begin to vanish from existence here. All thoughts and fears come to an end as I find protection beneath a cloak of invisibility, safe from the savages outside and the demons within.  Continue reading
It hits like a poison arrow causing me to drop what I’m doing and focus on the pain it inflicts.
Where does it come from? Is it shot from a bow of some unseen foe hoping to do me harm? Or does it arise from within when certain buttons are pushed, like a crazy bone reacting once a physician’s tool strikes that right (or wrong) spot?
My anger springs up almost immediately, spreading pellets out from a shotgun blast over a wide area, striking everything in its path, including the object of my ire as well as ones I never intended to harm.
The anger doesn’t dissipate once it explodes.
It simmers at a low boil, awaiting the opportunity to burn and scold anything or anyone my impatience forces me to look unkindly on and consider spraying upon. It pains and marks me as I hold it obscenely close trying to figure out where it came from, who or what caused it, and why I so easily fall prey to it whenever it erupts inside.
————-
Remove the arrow before the poison spreads and engulfs whatever goodness remains in you. It can destroy whatever love and compassion you tried to generate in life when cool-headed and away from less stressful situations.
Don’t try to analyze, categorize or editorialize the grave danger it poses. Don’t believe you can control it. You cannot “befriend” it.
It’s too strong and it will demand control of and over you every time.
Sure, you may have needed to use it to right a wrong, to defend with all of your might against some evil, to even kill so that an innocent could justifiably go on living.
But you must give it up! Use it sparingly, if at all, and release it as you learn the long, slow practice of patience.
————-
This could be first step in understanding that this poison will always be there, that there is a cause for its painful existence; and that help is available to forestall its deadly mission once you learn to walk a path you always knew you’d need to follow to truly awake.
PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) can be treated and understood without having to face the slings and arrows of war day in and day out.
(Let me deal with the type of arrow that brought down a brave warrior like the Greek Achilles!
I can think of no worse place to be than in a church, a temple, or a synagogue when an unbidden and involuntary giggle would invade my psyche and take control of me. A “giggle” is too mild a word: uncontrollable laughter would rise to the level of guffaws and downright knee-slappers, right at the most somber parts of a religious service. Continue reading
The one and only time I stood before an all-women jury, I ended up asking for a mistrial after the judge and prosecutor entered the jury deliberation room without my knowledge and in violation of the sequestration rule to safeguard against jury tampering.  Continue reading
I didn’t know how much I needed a “fix” until my head slumped on my chest and I “awoke” to a restful, calm, and peaceful world I had been away from for what seemed a lifetime. I felt.
But please don’t judge me. Don’t look upon me as weak or needy. I have tried so hard to be the strong, silent type who could weather any storm alone: self-reliant and dependent on no one except myself to get through the most difficult of life’s situations. Yet, each time I overcame what felt like one disaster after another, I knew deep inside I could not succeed on my own. I needed help from a Source I’d subconsciously tapped into to get me through each ordeal.
I now admit I couldn’t have done it without getting high while no one was looking. I’ve become addicted. In recent days, months, and years, I needed more and more of what I call the “elixir of life.” I’d crave the equanimity it would offer me as a serotonin chemical would enter into my bloodstream, my consciousness, my very essence.
I don’t care what others might say about my habit anymore. I need a crutch to get through my day, and I’m only realizing now how much I struggle when I fail to take a hit. The earlier in the day, I can get it, the better. I need that something extra to assure me all is well, that all will be well, no matter what failings, shortcomings, or simple ignorance I bring to daily life.
I am dependent on this “Source” to take me away from my worries, my concerns, my feelings of, I don’t know, call it an emptiness of sorts that so hard to describe, let alone, understand.
When the need calls to me, I look for a place where I can be alone. I get into a comfortable posture, a familiar one that offers a tingling sensation of anticipation. I am going to escape, I tell myself, as I settle into a chair or on a pillow, exposing my vulnerability to forces outside and inside myself.
I open one hand to the heavens above, ready to accept whatever peace may soon come my way. My other hand rests downward, touching the solid earth that grounds me. The arm and exposed hand facing skyward await the blissful infusion the drug will eventually provide.
My mind is racing like steaming locomotion, a runaway train minus a conductor at the controls. I can’t truly let go and open myself while my thoughts are zigzagging from one place to another. The thoughts fly from the past to the future. (They never seem to come to rest in the present!) Each carries unwanted baggage. I can’t rid myself of these thoughts. They come unbidden, unneeded. They impede my plans to escape the battlefield I’m maneuvering through.
Stop swinging at unseen opponents, hoping a knockout punch will somehow save you, Michael J. Give in, take the fix. Admit that you can no longer live without it.
Acquiesce to the Power Greater than Yourself. Feel warmth slowly spread through your body, easing the tightness in your neck and your shoulders, the parts so tense and coiled they feel like a jack-in-the-box ready to spring out. You need only breathe and allow the source to seep into you, to wash over you, to elevate your mind and your spirit.
Am I un-American or anti-religious when I tell you something I’ve been trying to say for years, but have been afraid of hurting your feelings?
Indulgences are some things I never thought I’d think about once I finished with my Catholic upbringing and moved onto Eastern Studies and the spiritual advice from the Kabbalah. But there I was reading how someone could limit their time in purgatory by performing certain acts and saying prayers.  Continue reading
“Did you hear what I said? I’m pregnant.
Joseph. Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“What’s there to say?” the young carpenter named Joseph said to himself.
“You tell me an angel “appeared” and “announced” you were with child . . . You ask me to believe no man had anything to do with this.”  Continue reading
Thank God for Buddhism.
What’s that you say?
I can’t have one in, and of, the other?
Are you telling this red-blooded American veteran that I cannot follow the teachings of the Buddha and still believe in the God of Abraham? Continue reading
On this Veterans Day, 11-11-11, what would you tell yourself if you could go back in time and greet that young man recently returned home from the war?
Is there a noble banker in the world? Only someone in the lending business who sees his calling as a “service for the people,” I believe, could correct past abuses and recommend changes for, and in the best interests of, us “99 percenters.”
I am sure there are many who entered the field with the best intentions and still work with distinction, living up to the honor bestowed only upon the most trustworthy in society. We need honest and reliable people who know their way around economics to guide the rest of us. When a few abuse the faith we place in them, it cripples the entire process and causes the type of havoc we see in protests by people who feel betrayed, used, and nearly hopeless.
Part of my “duty” as a lieutenant in the Army was to serve as a payroll officer in the states and another time in Vietnam. I short-change myself both times, losing $80 once and about $40 the next time. I didn’t report either discrepancy because I did not want superior officers to question my efficiency or competency.
You see, I felt “honored” to serve in that capacity. I had barely obtained a high school degree with no classes in home economics or any other type of economics. While in the military, I served as “paymaster” in between roles as a training officer in Ft. Polk, Louisiana, and as a combat infantry platoon leader in Southeast Asia. I enjoyed assisting those of all ranks who depended on their monthly pay, and I got so much out of taking part in their lives and what they planned to do with their cash.
(The Army had also assigned me to prosecute soldiers committing minor infractions and I learned I never wanted to take the side of government against a person ever again. I would eventually end up representing defendants in criminal cases brought by government officials.)
I believe that anyone who works in banking provides a much-needed service to the rest of us. We elevate our financial managers and count on them to give advice to our government leaders to steer us through both good and bad economic times. We depend on them when we need to borrow money, and we trust they won’t take advantage of their unique positions.
But when they do, we need people from within the field to call them out, to decry practices that might have been legal in the eyes of the law, but clearly illegal according to the social contract persons of their station assume when taking on such a role.
Money lending historically has been seen as a necessary evil at best, and grounds for excommunication at worst. (See the practice by the Catholic Church.) A main argument against it was that it created excessive profit and gain without “labor.” Labor was deemed as “work” in a Biblical context. Profits from money-lending or “usury” were not gained from any substantial work but from greed, trickery, and manipulation, according to early tenets in the three major Western religions.
———–
Unless honorable men practicing in the field step forward and offer to make needed changes today, I believe we’ll return to those “Dark Ages” where more drastic measures were used against those “one percenters.”
Can anyone spell “D E F A U L T” on loans?
Try it on.
See if it fits and whether you’d be comfortable in adopting it when the Occupation of Wall Street and the protest at a thousand other locations worldwide come to an end.
And end it will, with nothing to commemorate it save historians remembering in their books the greatest mass demonstration since Abraham protested the Tower of Babel. 
And just like Babel, this rising up will fall into ashes, unless we harness the spirit from this “cry in the wilderness” and put it into action. An action that is both “for” and “against” the economic system we work in, if we’re lucky enough to have a decent job to work.
———–
————
The wealthiest and most powerful nations understand that you cannot neglect basic human values. The Ninety-Nine Percenters are reminding them they need to change. They should accept a universal responsibility for the common good and the social contract they have with not only the less fortunate, but those of us with some economic security, who know deep inside what the One Percent is doing must end.
Once recommendations are made, the Committee would send its ideas to splinter groups of like-minded persons in each city, state, and country whose citizens could benefit from implementations. Publicize the names of banks, savings and loans and institutions that begin to comply with the voluntary suggestions. Let those with capital decide where to put their investments to perhaps take in less profit but give much more back to those who helped us with our gains.
L.O.V.E. — that and good old-fashioned compassion will help in the pursuit of happiness, while relieving suffering for others.
The phone rang, and Henry Rushing answered it, hoping the call would not delay his weekly trip to church services Sunday morning. The pastor of his Presbyterian Church was on the line. “Henry, you’ve got to prepare yourself,” the cleric said in his most comforting voice. “There are demonstrators outside our building protesting. Their signs have your name on them, and they’re not too charitable with what they’re alleging.” Continue reading
When I read the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators were unfocused and without a coherent message, I took a closer look at them in Philadelphia, and discovered some were disheveled street persons looking for handouts, and one was a graduate school political science major spouting Marxist teaching.
The greatest protest of our generation is seeking change in all shapes and sizes. You can see it in the signs the demonstrators carry, writing the letters out really big with magic markers so that passersby need not squint to get the messages.
There is not just one message, but many, which all have one thing in common: a belief that our world can do better for all and not just the few, the ninety-nine percent making $55,000 a year (per family) or less, as opposed to the one percent controlling some 40 percent of the wealth in the United States of America.
They don’t want your money, Mr. Entrepreneur, only your attention for a moral and ethical way of life that takes into consideration more than the Almighty Dollar.  Continue reading
It’s so wonderful to welcome you to visit. You return when I least expect you, embracing me and bringing peace and calm just when I still myself and end needless thoughts.
Are any thoughts actually needed when I go within? I need but seek a quiet moment with no thought save the intent to be free of the past and the future, thus ensuring I will rest “In the Now.”
It’s not based on my part alone. I find that I need the inspiration that others give me. You, who give your love so easily by opening your heart, unafraid of any consequences, allowing me to touch your soul and be one with you. Yes, I become one with you when the truth from the Source touches me as I hoped it would while writing from the depths of my inner being. It is then that I feel the kinship, the brotherhood with men and women alike.
—————
I seep into your arms, feeling the comfort that you offer. It is palpable, this feeling that arises. It is like a warm, fully lined coat, puffed up with weather-protected soft materials wrapped around me. I feel totally protected. Like a baby in a car seat with padding upon padding to ward off any harm.
I approach this level of consciousness by remaining perfectly still, freezing my body and then my mind. I sit with my eyes closed, taking in the sounds of a pet bird, motorists driving outside my home, and the ticking of a nearby clock.
It’s as close to heaven as I could ever imagine one could reach. I have no wants and no desires. I simply “am.”
Uh oh. I feel a slight pain in one leg, so I crossed over the other. Do I dare try to relieve this suffering by breaking the stillness? Can I remain in this state by easing my leg into a more comfortable position?
There, my leg is straightened out. I send my concentrated awareness to that part of the body that signaled the discomfort. I feel a warmth spread over that area. It is soothing. It blends in with the focus I still keep in this moment. I am still “In the Moment.” My peaceful calm has not been destroyed but simply adjusted. I need not fear slow, methodical actions to curtail my new, higher level of consciousness.
Should I experiment? Open my eyes and try to do something mundane? Ok, Michael, pay the bill. You can’t get any more mundane than that. You’re writing the check, placing it in an envelope. You’ve just used the left hemisphere of your brain; now let’s scoot back to the right side.
—————
There, you have it. Peace and calm are still here. You worked mindfully, just like the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, said you would.
Someone now asks you a question. You answer from what feels like a different world inside of you. You answer a second and third question, undisturbed and completely surprised that you can continue your feelings of love and happiness despite a break in your “meditative” posture. No, you don’t need to keep your eyes closed or to stay seated on a mat to be mindfully engaged with the world.
You just have to do it. Do these actions mindfully.
If you could only sell it to the world, we’d all live in peace and harmony. Hell, why don’t you just give it away freely?
Contoveros 