Positive Impacts of My Soul’s Emergence/Awakening

10/28/20

Dear [redacted],

Thank you for lunch the other day. The fish was delicious!

I love you; and I know you love me. We have been friends of the tried and true variety for about 50 of our 53 years, since the time we would play hide and seek in plain view of each other the entire time; our parents shaking their heads in amusement. Together we went to nursery school, camp, a teen tour, college and had summer share houses. All that (except nursery school) after me having moved away after 1st grade — pretty remarkable. I include our background, and other things that do not necessarily need to be said between us, because, if you do not object, I plan on publishing this letter on my Medium.com page.

At lunch you asked me what positive results can I attribute to my soul awakening [catalyzed by Lindsey’s cataclysmic passing, described in excruciating detail here] . That is a good and reasonable question despite it being unintentionally (or passively intentionally) stilted, and one deserving of a full and articulate response. Thus, you are not getting the answer in a “pick up the phone and call me.”

A twitter account I follow recently posted:

A man only needs 4 things; 1. God 2. something to do 3. someone to love 4. something to look forward to

As a result of my awakening, I have #1 and #3, though not as contemplated by the tweet, and am on the path to discerning #2 which is among my #4's.

As I answered at lunch, one positive result in the #’s 2 and 4 category is the self-awareness that made this email exchange between us possible:

Me:

I read between the very few lines of your email, and in the wide gap of days before the response, feelings of exasperation, frustration, and “what does he want from me now” and “I just don’t have time for this shit.” You would never say that. You would say you are here for me to talk. And that is true. I know you would find time if I asked. The unsaid thoughts / feelings I wrote above are true too, and that’s ok. I know I have been a disappointment in many ways. I feel a deep sadness about this as I write this, which is now passing somewhat as I realize it is a vestige of the Greg for whom the approval of others was sought to my detriment. I also know I have unintentionally taken advantage of you, too close to abused our friendship, and that I know is the true source of the sadness I am feeling at this moment. Do not worry, it is not remotely close to depression. Most of the time I feel quite content about the present and excited about the future. Actually I am not sad — tears have never been a sign of sadness in me — just the result of pent up emotional release.

There is a yin and yang to life’s purpose. There are human wants and soul wants. A life will be harmonious when those two are aligned. Life’s purpose is to learn and one aspect is learning how to satisfy the human wants while not offending the soul’s spirituality. I recently concluded choosing a career to support a lifestyle is ass-backwards. One should choose the career that fits whom one is at their core, and then choose a lifestyle that such career can support.

At my core I am a deep, across-multiple-disciplines thinker, which I just nuanced to: I am an explorer of ideas and the mind.

I’ve been chasing my tail trying to be a real estate developer. My professional path has been so wrong-headed that for me it has caused, and allowed to fester and grow, the unease that results from the feeling that one doesn’t fit in — subconsciously I have never felt comfortable in my own skin, which combined with genetics, leads to the problems that friends, family, and other observers would believe to be the root issue. Those problems are an effect and certainly can and may have a domino effect, but they are not the root cause.

I am at the precipice of discerning my path.

My calling will be something to which I can apply all of my strengths (general intellect, active imagination, soul awareness, strong writer, and INTP personality type, nicknamed the Logician, augmented by my also being an HSP (stupid PC term for an empath), and will have some aspect of imparting knowledge to others.

You:

This is a wonderful email. Thank you.

It is incredibly self aware, realistic and yes optimistic.

I have been hoping you might get here, eventually but I know more than anyone that you needed to arrive on your own.

And yes I have been frustrated by you, sometimes because of how it impacts me but mostly because of how it impacts you.

Most importantly, I would like to see you.

Let’s start with lunch.

My entire attitude towards life has changed. Life will now roll off my back, because, I’ve had 17,042 lives before this one and I don’t know how many more life cycles Sitara and I and Rama will agree that I ride. The happenings of life do not matter; how I react to them matters. This is a delicate discussion because most people with whom I will interact will not share this view and I do not want to seem to belittle the importance of this life for them. Were it not for this soul-emergence-resultant attitude, the optimism in my email might be the despair of mid-2013 [see Self-Portrait Circa 12/2013].

Soul emergence enabled me to see through my father and resulted in, to use the vernacular of today, his cancelation, and, a sharper contrast of how I will parent S&A. As I wrote to them recently and, in case you didn’t get to it in my 21-page essay:

A parent has two prime responsibilities: 1A) loving one’s children unconditionally and, especially when a child is young, making sure the child feels loved; 1B) discussing life lessons that the parent has learned. These two things will prepare a child to be an adult and to navigate life.

Learning only happens from making mistakes. A parent can discuss lessons it has learned in the hope that the child will recognize that it is in a situation like the parent described and not make a mistake, but learning cannot happen without making mistakes.

So first lesson from me: do not worry about perfection. Do your best, but don’t let the pursuit of perfection paralyze you; be ok with making mistakes if you do not repeat the same mistake over and over and over again. You will, many times. But if you are aware, eventually you’ll spot that you are headed to the same mistake and then you’ll do something differently, large or small, and the mistake will be avoided.

I could go on for many pages probably, but I want to focus on the most important lesson I can help you with, one that took me my entire adult life to learn: one will never achieve success if they follow a path that is not suited for whom they truly are. Now there are many measures of success. Most often success is thought of in financial terms and we can stick with that. A distant third to responsibilities 1A and 1B is providing financially. At this I have not been successful and instead of getting better it’s been getting worse. People look at how smart I am and think certain things must be hindering me. The truth is even those certain things would not be a hinderance, and may not even exist, if I had looked within and charted my own course rather than just follow the standard, go to college, go to grad school, get a good job path without giving much thought to what the career choice should be. Being a lawyer seemed to fit; I realized at about 20 that law was a much better fit than business, and law school and a few years as a lawyer was in all events a good choice and maybe even the right choice up to a point, but it is not the correctly sized round hole for my round peg.

You have probably heard, “try as you might, you cannot fit a square peg into a round hole.” Not heard is that a round peg will fit a square hole, but not well. If the diameter of the circle is just a smidge smaller than side of the square, it will fit ok but there will be lots of unfilled / unfulfilled space. That’s ok. Maybe. But if the diameter is any smaller than that, it will endlessly slide around and bet bruised banging into the walls of the square. That is me. I have clues to what my calling is and it is never too late to remake oneself and I shall succeed.

The important thing that I can impart to you now is to learn to look within. Every answer you need in life is already known to you. Be patient, sit with decisions until it not only seems right but feels right. Trust your gut. There is a difference between doubts in your head and feelings in your gut. There is a difference between being nervous in your gut and something really not feeling right in your gut. You will need to discern for yourself how to discern those differences; everybody is different. I can help you when you are trying to tell the difference if you come to me for help. I can guide you but the ultimate decision would have to be yours. It’s fine to make mistakes. I just hope you recognize mistakes way earlier than I have.

Much of your advice on career is guided by your personal experience with our shared introvert trait. I am now very aware that messages from the universe can be delivered at any time and through anyone. As a result of my new receptiveness, I recently learned what many already know — there are 8 distinct introvert-personality types (and another 8 extravert-types). I took a few 10-minute tests and learned that I am an INTP. I peg you as an ISTJ, which is very different from an INTP. Here are a few hallmarks of the INTP personality type that differentiate it from ISTJ, in which you will surely recognize me and not see yourself : INTP’s “focus on ideas and concepts rather than facts and details;” INTP’s “prefer to be spontaneous and flexible rather than planned and organized;” INTP “minds are complicated and active” — we “go to great mental lengths trying to devise ingenious solutions to interesting problems;” INTP’s are” typically non-traditional, and more likely to reason out their own individual way of doing things than to follow the crowd;” non-conformity is our natural state of being — it is not something we practice to shock others or make a statement. We “tend to share thoughts that are not fully developed, using others as a sounding board for ideas and theories in a debate against themselves rather than as actual conversation partners,” making us “appear unreliable, but in reality no one is more enthusiastic and capable of spotting a problem, drilling through the endless factors and details that encompass the issue and developing a unique and viable solution — just don’t expect punctual progress reports.”

“When INTP’s are particularly excited, the conversation can border on incoherence as they try to explain the daisy-chain of logical conclusions that led to the formation of their latest idea.” I often state my conclusions without connecting the dots. This is what was happening when I was discussing that capitalism can’t work if we are part of the global economy. You brought up comparative advantage. That’s great if you want a permanent class of unemployed and underpaid, which is what we have after 40 years of neoliberalism. The conservatives were brilliant to cloak their policies with a name that evokes the opposite.

I am open-minded about career, but I very much doubt that a position as a professor is realistic nor desirable, as, besides requiring a certain curriculum vitae, generally requires navigation of faculty and administrative politics and personalities, for which I am ill-suited. One day parachuting in some place to teach a course with an ever-changing syllabus would be wonderful — having students would be nice. When that happens it will derive from other success. I believe that writing will be the springboard if not more.

Me moving into Macon is a bad idea. New Hampshire is where I belong for the next phase of soul recovery/integration. Your concern about me pulling a Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas will not happen in New Hampshire; it could happen anywhere in New York. That I have not productively and diligently read here does not translate to I won’t in New Hampshire, where I won’t have any distractions.

And then there is the Robyn aspect. Robyn is Lindsey’s younger sister. Now she is an only child. Her dad has cancer. She just put her 17-year old dog to sleep. I think of her as my sister and I believe she would like to think of me as the brother she never had, though we only just met. Being in proximity to each other will help us bond and she will feel Lindsey’s presence; and I’m sure she will see to it that I keep my cupboards stocked — I’ve been reading some articles on how to eat well for $50 a week.

I may come out of New Hampshire with essays. I have a few half-baked ideas on which the yeast will rise in New Hampshire that could be careers. I may come out with a manifesto. We’ll see. The one thing I know is that is where my spiritual journey to self needs me to be. I do have a somewhat practical notion of what could lead to my book tour. I have 17,042 lives of source material to access for anything from biographies to histories to historical fiction.

I am a caterpillar; New Hampshire my chrysalis phase;

I will emerge a butterfly.

[11.19.20 addendum] There is one more step that will ensure a complete metamorphosis — the ultimate Shamanistic healing — a ten to twelve day retreat with a Shaman to undergo multiple ayahuasca ceremonies. As described by Patrick Paul Garlinger:

ayahuasca is, based on my experience, like drinking liquid death — almost as if Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction had poured herself into a shot glass. A very powerful purgative known affectionately as la abuela (“grandmother”) or just “Mother,” she is compassionate but not tender. “Mother Aya” takes you where you need to go and literally forces out what no longer needs to be there….Each night was a form of death, but in a truly awesome psychedelic fashion. When you are on ayahuasca, your mind is taken to unseen higher dimensions and you experience aspects of reality that you cannot otherwise reach with your normal, daily consciousness. The first night I confronted an emotional death, and my world essentially dissolved. I spent the first few hours wailing in tears as I witnessed all of my loved ones taken away from me and we reviewed all of the important relationships that needed to be addressed. The second night was a physical death in which I spent hours writhing in pain, until it was made clear to me that I was re-experiencing every bit of left-over pain carried in my cells from previous lifetimes. Slowly, over the next couple of hours, I went through a complete rebirth, emerging from a spiritual birth canal and being given language again. The third night was a complete rewiring of my mind. I spent the whole night babbling nonstop, telling every secret or uncomfortable thought I had never told, all of it shared with my fellow travelers, as Mother Aya dissolved portions of my ego that I needed to be released. In sum, each night was a form of death and rebirth — of my heart, my body, and my mind.

Throughout the entire process, though, I was connected with the natural world in a way that I had never been connected. When I stepped outside, the world hummed and buzzed with an energy and a beauty I had never seen. I could sense and see the flow of energy throughout the entire jungle around me. And in that was a key lesson: we are nature. But our negative thoughts and emotions — carried over through lifetimes — are not natural at all, and this is what gets purged in such a dramatic fashion during an ayahuasca ceremony (as well as through Light work and meditation). We are not separate from the natural world, but our constructed minds tell us otherwise. It is when we return to our true nature — pure, loving energy (the Divine) in a physical form (Nature) — that we become whole again. [emphasis added]

There were many breadcrumbs that lead me to this decision. None more powerful and affirming than the one I just experienced when I decided to include that last paragraph from Garlinger’s essay and read the sentence I bolded — I cried Gregory tears.

The tears are now pressing hard against my eyelid-damns (spelling intentional) because what I have to do now is so emotionally charged, and necessary for me to be spiritually pure enough for my Mother, Nurse and Indian Guides to collaborate with La Abuela to lead me to the watering hole where my Elephant told me in June he would be waiting to cradle me in trunk and ear to welcome me as a fully integrated an awake human-soul with my own channel — no intermediary.

Because of Elephant (Rama), I had always thought the watering hole was of the African savannah variety. But that is not actually what I pictured. I pictured a North American forest. The pressure-release-valves are opening….

My watering hole is Arlington Mill Reservoir in southern New Hampshire,

and the cabin is my chrysalis.

Yesterday I sent my mom the following:

Mom,

I need to get us dealing with the same deck of cards.

I’ve created a Catch-22 that I need to resolve. I decided back in April that I needed to end my self-medication. My biggest mistake was trying to do that without anyone knowing. My wrong-headed reason was I didn’t want you to think that everything I have written about was the result of medicating. My beliefs are mine, and a few billion Buddhists and Hindus share them too. On one level I don’t care what anyone thinks — Trying to keep it secret made it impossible to stop using. I just didn’t want all that has transpired to be written off, especially the dad thing….. I mentioned in one of my essays that I had an idea on why 12-step programs have a miserable success rate. I discussed with Rama and he said I was onto something generally, and he looked forward to me creating my own recovery program. The nurse guide told me that I would succeed at quitting on my third try, after I experienced a profound paradigm shift, and I was finally getting clean for the right reasons. The paradigm shift is everything I need to know does not require anyone’s opinion as my soul knows what’s right for me and I’ve started to tap into that.

My new 12-step model is six steps and I’m on step 6. Rehab is out of the question — not because I don’t want to quit — because there isn’t a damn thing that I would learn there. Harris [prior therapist — now trusted friend] said that to me years ago.

I need to get out of New York to provide the distance from accessibility and people, places and things. I decided that months ago. I had thought about Montana to Patrick and Chicago to Wendy, but those avenues are not readily available, which in and of themselves are breadcrumbs, and other breadcrumbs lead to New Hampshire. The most telling are that when I spent a week there at the end of September for the celebration of Lindsey’s life I didn’t have any supply, I didn’t jones, I was functioning, and I had no dystonia symptoms until the day I was heading home. Here, the addiction treats the dystonia. Everyone thinks the surgery worked. It didn’t and couldn’t. The reason I have idiopathic dystonia was my soul telling me I had to fix my life. Once it’s fixed, or once I am firmly on the right path, the dystonia will be cured. (I discerned this in May when Anne [channeler] told me the accountant spirit guide has a tremor).

So New Hampshire is the opposite of selfish. It is rehab. Reading, which I can’t seem to get done here, and writing, are not hobbies. They are key to me finishing step 6, which is to find my right-sized round hole.

I thought I had succeeded in May and again in June. I have identified herein two reasons I hadn’t. It has been gnawing at me that an additional key item had been handled by me in what is feeling more and more like hoping to skate by rather than face consequences. I just took about a 30-minute writing break because the the release valves are failing to hold back a flood.

The break in writing this is now two days.

In June while meditating, I felt the presence of my guides and Jason [friend passed June 2013], Sandy [like an uncle], Andrew [friend suicide 2005] and Willie [grandfather], and I confessed to them and they applauded. As I think back on the moment, I do not sense that Sitara [Lindsey’s soul] and Elephant were there. I have to face that I misread the effect of my confession and the applause.

I have also thought/hoped that what I need to confess does not need to be confessed because you already know. I’ve been hoping beyond hope that you have been reading between the lines for a long time. That would satisfy the human-need but not the soul’s need. You may know — I still need to do this.

I am writing rather than face to face because I express myself better in writing. Facing my words on the screen is also just as hard as looking at you. Pressing send will be too.

[confession redacted to protect others’ privacy]

The end or a new beginning? What defines me? The totality of my goodness or this 8-years-later recurrence of [redacted].

I have a strange ambivalence (this oft misunderstood word means to be of two minds — it does not connote a lack of caring). On the one hand my conscience screams at me in your’s and [redacted] voices many nights. On the other hand, I do not regret anything as it’s all part of what has brought me to the precipice of mini-enlightenment.

This has not changed much in a week. Why have I not hit send? Fear. Fuck fear. Sent on 11/25.

[We are still best friends😊. ]

[12/2/20 — I leave for NH tomorrow. I am looking forward to life.]