The truth of the last 8 and a half years

Chapter 71 of the Tao Te Ching suggests the following:

"Not knowing is true knowledge.

Presuming to know is a disease.

First realize that you are sick;

then you can move toward health.

The Master is her own physician.

She has healed herself of all knowing.

Thus she is truly whole."

Source: Tao Te Ching, English translation by Stephen Mitchell

At the lowest point in my co-occurring substance use disorder and mental health crisis, it was apparent to me and everyone around me that I was not doing well. About ten months following the release of deceptively captured and edited videos of me that essentially destroyed my professional reputation and career, I was lying on the floor of my rented one-bedroom apartment in the Catalina Foothills of Tucson, Arizona, amid a psychological and spiritual breakdown. In this state, I had only a tiny keyhole of insight into what I had been through compared to what I understand today. At that moment, I was convinced that the world hated me, that God was punishing me, that my family and friends had abandoned me, and I was essentially the walking dead.

Whenever I see one of those zombie apocalypse movies or TV shows, my reaction is usually, "Wow, that zombie looks exactly like someone in active addiction." There is a reason for this. The gaunt facial features, atrophied musculature hanging on a frame of skin and bones, the discolored skin, the hair falling out, the stiff arthritic joints popping while the zombie walks stiffly, seeking what they crave. It all fits the picture of what someone in active addiction feels while experiencing that deep, seemingly impossible to quench craving.

The ironic part of this reaction pattern is that it is merely a parody of the real thing. As I was lying on the floor, an empty baggie lying next to me, dehydrated, all my muscles were tightened and atrophied, I was functionally immobile. I had not gone for a walk, hike, or bike ride for at least five months. I had barely been outside except to go to my car, cross over to the grocery store to buy more vodka and mixer, maybe sometimes food, or go anywhere else other than to my dealer's house to buy more of my drug of choice. My skin was tight and gaunt; my cheekbones were showing, and my clothes were falling off my body. I had lost at least sixty pounds over the prior year. Compared to brief periods when I had been semi-sober in the past, there might have been almost an eighty to one hundred pounds difference. I had a history of binge eating when I was sober from alcohol or my d.o.c., with many yo-yo diet experiences where I had gained or lost significant amounts of weight. Despite living in the high desert since the prior November, my skin tone was pale and partially translucent. The needle marks on my arm and resulting bruises stood out such that most of the time, I wore longer shirts with my t-shirts to cover them up. That was a desert thing anyway, covered with some sort of shield to avoid overexposure to the sun, which was how I explained to others. The truth was not something they needed to know.

I don't know when the last time I had eaten anything substantial had been before that time. When I got high, I didn't like to eat a lot, because my body would run it through very fast, and I would have challenges with my digestive system. The last thing I wanted when I was hooking up with a guy was to have a problem performing sexually or, worse yet, have diarrhea from what I had eaten. So, my addicted logic was just not to eat when I was using, problem solved. Add to that the perception at the time that guys liked me better when I was skinnier, that my body looked more acceptable to potential sexual partners, and then, of course, I would keep that train going. Anyway, I could survive nicely on pre-mixed protein shakes and water, with the occasional real food coming when I was done using for that cycle, i.e., when I ran out of drugs and was sleeping for several days to recover.

Obviously, I was sick. Very sick. Sick in the body, sick in the mind, sick in the soul. This is where my encounters with political propagandists and supporters of the new leader of the country had left me lying on the floor, tripping out, in psychosis, and nearly beyond help. I had very few real friends anymore, and the ones I did have were gravely concerned about my well-being. In my perception, however, nobody cared about me. I barely cared about myself. I thought God had put a curse on me, and I was mentally preparing to meet death. In the moments that I became suicidal, I remember thinking, "Would anyone really miss me, considering all the embarrassment, pain, and destruction I have brought to people's doorsteps?"

And then the phone rang. Not once. Not twice. But repeatedly.

My sister, who lived just a few miles away from me, was blowing up my mobile. She wasn't letting it rest. She was gravely concerned about me, such that she was determined to get me on the line. I had seen her the week before, and she knew I was not doing well. She knew I was struggling and didn't like what she had seen when I sat in her living room. It scared her, and she wasn't about to lose her brother to addiction. She was tuned in on my state and knew that I was in trouble. After six or seven times letting it go to voicemail, I finally answered the phone. After some denials and her continued prodding, I admitted that I needed some help and physically couldn't get up off the floor. I told her I was afraid to leave my house, that I knew that someone was out to get me. I told her that I didn't feel safe right now and was thinking of ending it all. Somehow, she convinced me to call 911 with her on the line with me.

I remember telling the dispatcher, "Please also send the Sheriffs and come with lights and sirens off." I was concerned about the neighbors seeing me being loaded into the ambulance. I didn't want anyone to know how bad it had become. Even more, I didn't want it to make national news that the once influential political consultant who had been disgraced publicly by political propagandists, who had survived 25 years of trench battles, was going down for the count in surrender and being shipped off to the psych ward. Even then, in that delusional state, I was more worried about my reputation and family name being harmed than I was worried about saving my own life.

When the deputy knocked on the door, I told him I could barely get to the door to unlock it. He waited but was prepared to come in one way or another. I didn't know it then, but my sister had already called him directly on his cell phone. He would ensure I didn't jump off the balcony on my way to the ambulance. I remember when I finally unlocked the front door and let him in, his demeanor was reassuring, using structured de-escalation language with me while other deputies were searching for my drugs. "Too late, it's gone," I explained. I had already flushed what I had left and my pipe down the toilet. No way was I going to score a possession charge at the same time I was giving in and going to the hospital.

As they surrounded me to walk me down the stairs, two in front of me, one behind me, it was clear they were expecting me to make a try at jumping off the third floor. My sister had warned them. We continued down until we reached the main courtyard in the complex, and they slowly inched me toward the waiting ambulance. I didn't see whether my neighbors were watching out the windows or not. I would not look up. My sister was at the outer gate, a look of fear on her face, trying to hold back her streaming tears. As the medics loaded me onto the gurney, she gave me a big hug and said she'd be at the hospital by the time I got there. I wasn't sure I still wanted to go, but surrounded by Pima County Sherriff's deputies, paramedics, and firefighters, I was not going to negotiate my way out of this at this point. "Okay, let's get on with it, let's go," I said with resignation.

Just moments before that moment, while lying there on the floor, huddled in the corner, I prayed. "God, Universe, whatever you are, I don't know what you have planned for me or if this is the moment I'm supposed to die, but if you decide to save me, I'll do whatever you tell me to do." I didn't know if I was going to make it out of this, but I finally had admitted that some higher source energy that I had been connected to in the past was there in that moment. I felt it very faintly, but it was there, asking me to just give up and stop fighting, to allow it to do its work. It also wasn't allowing me to give up just yet. True to what I had heard from other addicts and alcoholics, though, I had to exercise my free will to choose life or death. That was how it worked. So, my one last-ditch effort was to choose to ask for my life to be spared. Then, shortly after, the phone began to ring. The wheel of time, the wheel of infinite change, the karmic wheel, instantly began to turn, and the divinely inspired rescue began.

Seeing the wheel change things

On this snowy Saturday afternoon as I write this piece, I have slept in. This week was, admittedly, tiring. It really started when I got back from the trip. I spent the entire last two weeks filling out forms, digging out information, submitting applications and payments, readjusting my budget, taking the dog to the dog park not just once but several times, getting things set up for massive change. The end of January returned me from sabbatical in the spiritually charged gorgeous high deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, traversing Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, and southern Minnesota back to home in Minneapolis. I was pretty worn out by the marathon trip, which I completed in three harried days. Immediately after returning home, I had an in-person job interview, two doctors' appointments, a therapy appointment, a chiropractic appointment, and the requisite visit to the grocery store to replenish my empty refrigerator.

When I returned to work a couple of days later, immediately I was welcomed back by colleagues to the treatment center where I currently practice. People asked me about my trip, commented on my tan and gentler demeanor, noticing that I was tired but seemed relaxed. They were right. For the first time in more than eight years I had taken a full break from everything, left everything behind but the truck and the dog, and just lived and breathed without a real plan.

What only I and my family knew, however, was that I had spent the entire trip in a state of flux. Finishing grad school and receiving notice of the conferring upon me of a master's degree while I had been gone had done something to my psyche. I had released attachment to this place, to the identity of being a drug and alcohol counselor, and to being a grad student working on a degree as a co-occurring clinician. I was in-between identities.

But was I really?

As the dog hops up on my bed to cuddle and lick my face, as she does almost every morning, she reminds me to be present in the moment. She wants some attention, and to go out to pee. She lays on top of me with her muzzle positioned right below my head, licking the bottom of my neck, then spooning me, laying there with her head and body below mine. We lay there for a bit, and I scratch her belly and side gently, just sitting in that moment. Suddenly she jumps up and walks casually to the living room window, curtains still drawn, sticks her head underneath, and jumping up to the ledge, peering out at the freshly fallen snow. She barks; it is time to go outside. I slowly rise, throw on some clothes, and join her in the living room. Unaware of the time, I look at the microwave. The clock says "11:11".

In numerology and mysticism circles, "11:11" is one of the most powerful numerical combinations a person can see. It often referred to as the "mirror hour" by numerologists, spiritual practitioners, and people who are in presence. Depending on one's orientation to spiritual, psychological, or mystical concepts, it is an example of synchronicity, which Jung conceptualized as "stripping off the fantasy, magic, and superstition which surround and are provoked by unpredictable, startling, and impressive events that, like these, appear to be connected." Source: C.G. Jung, Syncronicity: An Acasual Connecting Principle.

I lean-in to the superstitious part, honestly. When I see this synchronistic number, provided I am present enough in that moment to notice it, my instinctive spiritual interpretative conceptualization is that whatever I am doing in that moment, whatever I have just had as an underlying idea, wherever I am standing in that moment; "11:11" indicates whole beingness in divine presence at that moment, aligned with source. I'm in the aligned state, in the intended place, at that exact moment of the Now.

So here I was, in presence, and my instinct told me now is the time to continue telling the story. It is time to lay it all out there. Approaching the stove, grabbing my trusty saucepan, moving it to the tap for some water, adding precious H2O to the pan and heating it up, opening the bag of coffee, preparing the press and filter, scooping the grounds, adding a couple squares of chocolate to the mug, pouring the hot water over the coffee and chocolate, I make a strong cup. This is going to take a bit. Still in presence I am processing the "11:11" message. The steaming fresh essence of coffee wafting into my nostrils, I slowly walk to my desk and hit the power button on my laptop. "Here we go, time to put it out there," I tell myself.

Telling the ugly truth isn't always a cathartic experience. As I writing, a part of me inquires, "how deep should I go?" The inner knowing says," just tell it, stop worrying about that, just tell it."

This inner knowing that comes from higher source gradually developed over a lifetime. When I was very young, perhaps 4-5 years old, most of my thoughts, feelings, and actions were guided by this instinctive beingness. When social programming from parents, grandparents, teachers, pastors, peers, indeed everyone and everything around me began, however, like many children I was instructed to ignore and sometimes even act against it. A beautiful part of having progressed to a certain point at fifty-three is that I now am closer to this inner knowing and beingness than perhaps ever I have been. Recovery, spiritual practice and exploration, therapy, collectively allowed me to release many of these external influences, teaching me to return to source again and again for guidance. In meditation often I feel it when my neural crown is pulsing with connective energy, extending from the base of my spine up through my chakras, then through the top of my body like an umbilical line to the universal source consciousness. In these moments there is no fear, no anxiety, no questions that dominate my thinking. There is no overthinking, no rumination, no monkey mind. There is just the message. I am a vessel through which the message flows.

A new journey emerges

After graduation, in coming through the realization that I had crossed a certain threshold of development, the inner knowing instructed me to release thinking and organized book knowledge, indeed everything I have learned academically, clinically, and experientially thus far, return to this source energy. This phenomenon was assisted, no doubt, by the extremely deep and powerful spiritual energy that I experienced in the high desert. From learning in presence at the Eckhart Tolle and Kim Eng Inner Light spiritual retreat in Phoenix, to truck camping out in the Saguaro National Forest, to climbing up through the mountains through Navajo and Hopi ancestral land to the plateaus, again ascending into the asteroid bowl of Santa Fe; each of these events had spiritual messages to teach, if I remained open and listening.

These lessons were seemingly everywhere I went during that 22-day journey. Everywhere I looked, each message I heard, each dream I experienced, each vision I had, each helped me level-up just a little bit, to where I am at this moment. When I watch the universal wheel of time slowly turn, having traversed millions of experiences and billions of individual moments since July 2017, it is humbling to understand how much change has occurred during that period. It would seem that the prayer that I made in crisis, laying on that floor cold and tired, sick to the core, has been answered many times over and at all levels. The universal source energy, what some would call God, answered, loudly.

So today I begin tearing the house apart, separating my personal effects into "keep, donate, discard." In just a couple of weeks the dog and I will move out of graduate student housing into a new space. In just a couple of weeks I will say "see you later" to colleagues, a base of clients we serve, and the company where I was first a client and later a student clinician. In just a couple of weeks I will start a new opportunity within a new organization, in a new role. In a couple of weeks, I will begin to discover what it all means that the last eight and a half years have carried me from an unconscious place where I operated from ego and hubris to a place of much greater consciousness in all moments. This new place, without identification attached to it, is a place I don't believe I have ever visited before. I am mirroring my early life, like a little child, listening to the instinctive inner beingness, connected to source energy as my guide and teacher.

Grateful I am.

Humbled I am.

Present I am.

I am that I am.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

Namaste.

Namaste.