Standing Stark: The Willingness to Engage
Chapter Twelve
Thresholds
“Zorro?” Don Américo inquired of a passerby. The man said a few sentences in Quechua, gesturing in such a way that I realized we were to go over a few streets.
We were in Paucartambo, a place barely large enough to be called a town. We had paused on the way to Salk’a Wasi, Don Américo’s ancestral home located several hours outside Cusco. We still had at least an hour to go, depending on the conditions of the road, or as he had already intimated, if the mountain hadn’t “fallen down.” Having already experienced the circumstances of the route we had thus far driven, and knowing from previous trips it would not at all improve, I was happy to put my feet on the ground for a while and stretch my legs.
We were interested in masks. Paucartambo was known for the Festival of the Virgin of Carmen. Each July, thousands of Quechua Indians descend upon this small burg where no conventional lodging exists, to find shelter somewhere in order to take part in the traditional dances whose origins stretch back centuries to the times when Catholicism was introduced. Over countless years, the celebration had become a syncretistic diversion from an often difficult existence for those who live in the mountains.
A dancer isn’t complete without a mask, signifying a particular persona out of the many folkloric characters. Indeed, in the days after the conquistadors came to Peru, donning a mask was one of the few ways the brujas and paq’os, sorcerers and medicine women and men, could come out of isolation, mix with their people and have some measure of protection against being tortured and killed.
Local artisans labor the entire year to produce enough masks to satisfy the demand during the festivities. Even though it was February, we hoped to find a good selection from which to choose some souvenirs.
When Don Américo indicated we should track down Zorro because he was the best, I thought he was kidding. I had in my mind the hero of the old radio and movie shows.
After wandering the cobble-stoned streets some more without luck, and being redirected by townspeople a few times, we came to what could hardly be described as a storefront. It had no windows and its doors were closed. Not to be deterred, Don Américo called something in Quechua over the tall iron fence connected to the dilapidated building. Presently, we heard a man’s voice answering, apparently telling us he would come open the door. Don Américo raised his index finger, signaling we should wait, and said quietly, “They call him ‘The Fox.’”
I heard sounds from inside of things being moved and the door unlocked. The translation made sense, but I was still curious how someone would garner such a name. The answer came when the door swung open and the artist appeared to greet us. Unusual looking for a Peruvian, his hair was fox red and as bristly as a hedgehog’s, standing straight up from his head. He also had a level of intensity to his demeanor that he’d likely worn for years. Don Américo and Zorro greeted each other like lost friends. We were invited inside and entered a small, ill-lit room with cracked mud walls. I could see the light of the courtyard beyond through another door.
It was like entering Gepetto’s workshop. Pinocchio wasn’t hanging around, but I didn’t miss him. Low, narrow shelves lined the perimeter walls. Hooks were placed sporadically on the higher places. Papier-mâché masks in various stages of completion either hung or sat in the spaces provided for them.
There was a white, narrow-faced one with black eyebrows in an attitude of surprise and pursed lips. I could almost hear the “Oh!” it silently expelled. There was a black-faced one with round, apple cheeks, merry, laughing eyes and a gold goatee. In all the various characters, my favorite was the billy goat with real chin hairs and a serpent uncurling itself from a horn and wiggling down his forehead. There were a few that had dark, demonic qualities as well. We had a good time choosing some to take with us and bartering for them as the custom dictated.
Having completed our purchases, we left Paucartambo and continued on our way. Don Américo had been quiet for a while, as though he was reflecting on something. He finally spoke and told a story.
For many years, Zorro had a problem with drink. And as universally happens with such issues, it had negative effects. He wasn’t a happy reveler, but a morose loner whose life was spiraling out of control. He became obsessed with mask making. But it wasn’t just any of the masks that entrapped him. It was the demonic ones. Perhaps seeing his own tortured soul reflected in the images he made, he was gripped by this activity. He couldn’t tear himself away. The compulsion to recreate his own hell sucked him into timeless places. Every waking moment, deep into the night, he worked. And as he did so, he began to lose touch with everyday reality. Days and nights were a continuum of his fingers working, almost as if they were under someone else’s command, transmuting malignant spirits from thought form into material existence. Finally, he teetered on the precipice of what appeared to be psychosis. Then the many faces of his doppelgänger escorted him through a portal into another world. And something of a profound nature happened there.
When he returned, he was vague when attempting to relay the experience to others. There were no words for such. Nor could he say where the place was exactly. But he was very clear that the catalytic event occurred. And it changed him exponentially. His obsession for demonic mask making ceased. He no longer had a problem with drink. A normal life emerged. But it was more meaningful in the living of it.
Escort Service
Zorro went through a threshold. Whether with paranormal accompaniment or through stealthy tricks of the mind, his fixation became so grand that it could no longer be contained. The bubble popped. And he was ushered into another dimension, another reality. This was literally so because, when he was reintroduced into this plane, the flavor of his old reality was gone. He had experienced transformation.
As any of us move from one phase of the Re-membering Process to another, or one Dwelling Place to another, we may go through a series of dark nights. Some are mere disturbances of “sleep.” Some are what seem to be unending, full-blown nightmares.
In order to loosen our handshake with a thought form or habit that doesn’t serve us, we often inhabit every corner of it; revisit every subtlety, in order to finally be repelled by it. We delve deeply into the form of our own particular ways of abdication.
When we focus on something intensely, we give it power. The obsession looms larger and attracts its fulfillment. When it becomes so concentrated that we can hardly stand it, some of us pull back and store it away. The convolution submerges. It goes underground — for a while — until it raises its head to be considered again. Thus cycles the request for authenticity.
Others have a tolerance for such heat that when the delusion is most grandiose they increase it still. And finally the pressure blows and its immensity propels them through a worm hole, turning them inside out, the force shearing any last vestiges of the old reality from their grasp. They are brought painfully to their knees and then taught, through divine means, to stand again.
This is the path of purification. Those of us who are dedicated to becoming clean and clear, to being absolutely present to All That Is, will follow it relentlessly. We will do so until we finally release whatever form of fear has held us tethered in place. And then we will continue undeterred — knowing there is even more necessary.
The severity of this evolution will depend on the degree of clinging to disillusion we practice and our own penchant for drama. Even so, as we get closer to those inner Dwelling Places, to the real Initiation, the dark nights are perhaps more full-blown. A complete embrace with the Divine is so close and we are vigorously urged to lose the veil — to pull it away and see what remains, if anything at all of previous experience.
Subterfuge
In the process, the ego mind will throw up any number of obstructions in on-going attempts to block the way. Yet, these are the very things that can open us and we can attune through them. It’s a matter of recognition.
Unfortunately for me, I more often became aware of the lesson after the fact. It takes acute observation and fine-tuning of the Witness to catch yourself at your own foolishness. But then we wouldn’t have the opportunity for refinement if there hadn’t been a time when we were clueless. It is this understanding that can allow us to make peace with the past — and not repeat at least that particular aspect of it.
My folly was huge. I didn’t recognize it until two years after its completion and I had spent a little time with someone who had played a major part in it. After the visit, on the daylong drive home through mountainous desert, I had entered a state of mindlessness, a kind of reverence for the landscape. When I had rested there long enough, my vehicle automatically guiding itself, little bubbles of truth began to arise from the still point inside. And when reality had coalesced enough, it finally merged with the terrain to the degree that all was laid out for me to see.
I had a panoramic view of a stream that had run through past events, its course muddying and eroding what was fertile land. Disparate waters do often intertwine and create even more force, can clarify the causeway, but the gestalt that generated then was relative to me taking full responsibility for my part in the parody.
Rather than whipping myself, I felt immense relief and was truly amazed at the complexity in which the process had played itself out. I also felt grateful that I had engaged with such a person, whose very nature would ensure an intense roller coaster ride, would induce greatly repressed responses in me and would produce such a guaranteed continuum of climactic occurrences that I could not deny the threshold through which I was ultimately catapulted.
The content of our considerable drama is of little importance. The elements of my own folly are where I find significance. Through them, my life and consciousness took a turn of consequence.
It had taken a journey of many years, one through ignorance, to doubt, and then consistent convincing for me to finally accept the gift of intuition that I had been given. At that point, I embraced it fully. As I did so, it got stronger. I had visions and bodily felt sensations guiding me that I trusted absolutely. Sometimes auditory messages would come. I made decisions and acted through these signals. My life was richer and even took on what seemed, from the perspective of others, to be a magical quality and every now and then a foolhardy one. For me, I found great comfort in recognition of the birthright we all are given. Thus the Divine supports us.
Unknowingly, there were also other ways I was being nurtured. The nurturance was through learning what was still resident in me that would tarnish or misdirect any guidance that came. I had keen clarity regarding the path my life would take and a strong sense of who would travel beside me. While I steadily followed my sixth sense, I also put a caveat on its intelligenc — expectation. I began to place all kinds of parameters on the final destination; exactly what it would look like, sound like, feel like. And over the next couple of years I proceeded to push tenaciously toward fulfilling the tight little box into which I had contained my dream.
When we push, we are often met with its complement. Force begets force. People and events don’t necessarily like to be controlled in such ways. As things increasingly didn’t come to fruition in expressly the way I deemed, not at all, or just the opposite, my disappointment and frustration increased. Things began to fall apart, to unravel. And then I recognized at a profound level that I had no control. I had colluded with illusion.
A bit later in this particular leg of the unfolding, I had a metaphysical experience whereby what I saw with my eyes vacated, cone by cone, until I was left with nothingness. The veil had been removed. Nothing of recognition remained. What I thought was “reality” didn’t even exist. None of it was real. I remember a thought flitting across my mind at that point, “I know how people go crazy.”
When the mind finally admits to illusion, we cannot handle it at an ego level because, in that instant, the ego realizes that it doesn’t endure. This experiential knowledge threw me into an abyss. I entered my own dark night.
What I thought had been my foundation, the illusory one, crumbled. My understanding at that time was that I had placed all my trust on intuition, a trust that had been years in the confirming. I believed I had been misguided. My faith had been betrayed. My internal world and its outer manifestations fell apart. Someone who knew me had asked how I was doing, seeing the difficulty in my life. I’d answered, “I’m trying to figure out who I am.” It was as though the statement had come from far away. It seemed that I hadn’t spoken it.
Indeed, I was in search of my Self. My identity was gone. I felt as though I was wandering in some desert in search of an oasis. But the mirage kept on disappearing as I would get close to it. Did it look like psychosis? I doubt it. However, from a narrow clinical standpoint, I was having many of the symptoms — regular auditory and visual “hallucinations” and other manifestations.
Was I teetering on some razor’s edge? Absolutely. My knees were weak and shaky. And even though all around me was uncertain, and downright frightening, there was the still point that held me steady at a core level through all of it. It was this enduring aspect of my Core Self that persistently created the thrust that would drive me to that edge and then, finally, create a calm that allowed me to step through the farther doorway. I had already been through the free fall and bottomed out.
The move through that specific threshold generated over time and culminated with my drive through the desert two years later. It happened well after the dust had settled around the precipitating events and I had regained a sense of stability. That time I hadn’t been in angst searching out some mirage, but in a state of appreciation for the evolving topography. And the truth came. The foundation that had cracked had been the need to tightly control. In that moment, I could see that intuition was the expectancy that intent generated. I need only follow the cues given to me in my daily life, through synchronicities, to its fulfillment. It was not intent that had betrayed me, but my own very limited intention that had caused my derailment. I was ecstatic for the fierce magnificence of the journey.
We all have follies, messages we give ourselves about “not being enough” or its polar opposite regarding “entitlement.” Perhaps it’s about feeling helpless, hopeless or unsafe. We can guarantee that the people and events will show up in our lives to ensure our notice of the lies we tell ourselves. We just need to sort through and acknowledge the falsehoods.
Fixate on them. Dip into all their subtleties. Give them power. Create the intensity. Then let these follies be your escort. Attune to them in such a way that they can usher you through a threshold to another dimension — the nowhere of freedom.
And then look back. Witness the ludicrousness of the gyrations through which you put yourself. Finally, have compassion and gentle humor toward the fool within.
Secret Initiations
There are things we aren’t told. If we search for the key to the secrets, they’re mostly hidden. When we do come across some clues, they may make interesting or intriguing knowledge. But ultimately the entry into understanding is through exposure. We generally don’t even begin to look for this brand of education until we’ve begun to touch the edges of it experientially and have questions. It doesn’t come bidden, but unbidden, through openings we create. However, there’s no formula to generate the opening. When we’ve been seasoned a little, more usually begins to come. And even then, there’s still Mystery.
There are metaphysical and paranormal episodes I’ve alluded to throughout this book. I’ll now describe some of those things clearly as they happened in my experience. This is not for sensational content, but to record these events with the intent of letting others know the nature of what can occur. It doesn’t mean that it will, as everyone is different. However, I found great solace when I finally discovered fleeting references in spiritual, and even some psycho-spiritual literature to the types of things that sometimes manifest at certain points on the path. It verified for me that I wasn’t a lunatic, just deeply engrained in the awakening of consciousness.
While I have been a practitioner of meditation for well over twenty years, during the time when my foundation was dissolving beneath me, I began to do it more intensively. I would meditate for up to four or five hours at different periods during the day or night. Feeling my reality slipping away, I was attempting to hold onto some level of normalcy and calm. I knew meditation to perform those functions for me and, additionally, often produced insights into my own condition.
I began to have more visions during meditation, but not just any old images. I would see pieces of a robe made out of coarse material, sandaled, dusty feet and such. Strangely, I knew that these were parts being shown to me, the whole being Jesus. I felt this was unusual for me in particular since I wasn’t raised in an organized religion. In fact, I’d had little subjection at all except what we’re all exposed to at least peripherally in our culture. I’d had no prior relationship with Jesus of Nazareth or the Christ Consciousness, nor was I specifically seeking one out. Yet, there He was and continued to be. Once during a meditation, He reached out and touched me with oil at the Third Eye. I literally felt the anointing. Another time, I saw His robed arm with a finger pointing toward a line of people walking in a line away from us, bundles on their backs, as though I was being directed to join them, perhaps being told it wasn’t time to jump off the edge on which I was poised.
The climactic point in this period though was finally when, one morning, I was experiencing such mental angst that I was actually crying out for help and nearly tearing my hair from my head. I somehow surrendered my anguish. And then I saw a hazy figure appear on my right, audibly saying to me, with the gentlest voice imaginable, “Don’t be troubled, my child.” I sensed the top of my head being lightly stroked.
The supreme compassion I heard in His voice and the warmth I felt from His hand caused me to break down and weep, a real gusher. I cried out all my sorrow, loss and fear. And when I was finally dry, I sat there cross-legged on the floor for the longest time. Then I got up and went into my bedroom to dress. Emerging, the entire house was filled with the strong, sweet smell of blossoms. My deep suffering had gone. My life began to seem more solid. I felt safe. Things began to turn around for me after that.
I haven’t had quite those images or heard His voice so clearly since that time. But I periodically feel His undeniable presence. And sometimes when I’m with someone and we’re doing healing work, I smell blossoms still.
It was also during this time of concentrated meditation, that I began to have a sound in my ears — continually. It’s always there if I choose to notice it. It’s here with me now as I write these words. It’s a kind of tone. It’s never unpleasant and sometimes can even change into a kind of faint chirping, almost a singing. From the beginning, I never thought it was tinnitus. I somehow recognized it as the sound of Creation. And sometimes when I’m in retreat with others we share in the hearing of it. These are times when we’re all in an altered state, beyond what is considered the norm. My understanding is that when I was engaged in that period of deep, ongoing meditative practices, I broke through some barrier. I no longer do hours long meditation as a usual course, but a shorter one still starts every day. However, the effects of those times, and its reinforcements, are now an integral part of who I am.
There is another phenomenon that I find unusual, my sense of smell. Under everyday circumstances, I have a poor sense of smell. An odor has to be strong for me to notice it. But if it comes from a paranormal or otherworldly source, my abilities turn keen. In this book, I’ve already mentioned scenting tobacco during times of meditation and otherwise. I recognize it as a ceremonial accoutrement, probably from one line of my ancestry. In my previous book, Calling Our Spirits Home, I wrote about a long encounter I had with a discarnate spirit who would announce his presence through a putrid smell.
This capability regarding smell showed up long before I recognized the sources generating it. Years ago, I lived in an old house built in the 1920s. It had a mudroom off the kitchen with a separate entrance. A previous owner had turned it into a half-bath and barred the outside door. One day I had been out for a while and returned. I went into the old mudroom. When I did, I smelled the strong, stinky odor of cigars! I certainly didn’t smoke them and none of my friends did either. I was alarmed and thought my home had been violated by a break-in. However, when I went back into the kitchen, a few feet away, there was no smell. When I re-entered the mudroom, the wisps were there, albeit a little weaker. This occurrence remained a mystery until later when these things began to happen occasionally. Then I realized that some previous resident, one who had transitioned, had been paying his old home a visit.
On the spiritual path, there are also effects created through the subtle energy field we each have and whatever forces may drive them. In the beginning, after I had been regularly meditating for a fairly short period of time, I had what I can only describe as energy bubbles that must have been bumping up against some blockages. They became more acute over time and caused my body to seem, to me, as though it was being pulled over, almost folding itself in half to my right side. I asked someone to observe me one time when I was experiencing this phenomenon. The person told me my body had remained upright. After a long while, this pressure disappeared. The blockages must have opened.
Over time my sensitivity toward feeling my own energy and that of others has increased dramatically. In the process, there have been phases through which I’ve been that, upon their completion, seem to further expand my capacity for energetic awareness and spiritual fortitude.
When I was engaging in the intensive meditative practices mentioned earlier, I started having nausea. It wouldn’t happen during the actual practice, but would appear, out of nowhere, periodically during the day. I wasn’t ill in any way that could cause it. It would stay for usually no longer than thirty minutes, often less, and then leave. It didn’t incapacitate me. It was just there. The sporadic nausea lasted for about one month and hasn’t returned.
A few years later, I went through a period when I would awaken in the night around 3 a.m. to violent energy rushes. They would start at my feet and would ascend to my head in forceful waves. It felt like I was being ravished. It was well beyond my control to stop. It was terrifying at first. But I quickly realized it was a passage of some sort and gave over to it. My guess is that it was a kundalini opening. I got very little sleep during that time, but was able to maintain just fine during the day. These happenings ceased after about six weeks and have not returned.
What took its place for a long time was what I can relate as a very subtle shimmering movement of energy that originated right below the navel at the Sacral Chakra and dissipated by the time it reaches my Heart Chakra. It’s strongest near the Solar Plexus and has a pleasurable, erotic quality to it. It was present frequently every day and has lessened over a nearly three-year timeframe. It still calls on me occasionally.
While the aforementioned forms are what we may imagine would be part of the path, and some of them we even hope for, there was another form with which I began to have experience that was explicitly unwelcome. I learned that I could not deny that the dark side exists as well — and sometimes visits.
In an earlier time, I had felt some kind of presence pressing down on me at night every now and again. I began to smell something musty hovering outside my physical body that no one else could smell. I thought perhaps my body was diseased in some way, but my health was perfect. These happenings finally stopped after Jesus made his climactic appearance to me described earlier. I’d had about eighteen months of peace before the next incidents started.
Looking back, I should have recognized that something of question was hanging around. I would see Cypress, my most attuned cat, staring into space, looking disturbed. Shortly after that, I was abruptly awakened in the middle of the night to something invisible trying to suck the air out of my body. It felt like a tube had been placed over my lips and a vacuum was attempting to turn me inside out. It was noxious. I was not dreaming. As I jerked upright and began to spit in attempts to separate myself from whatever it was. Cypress, who had been sleeping under the covers next to me, sprang out growling and hissing. I had extreme nausea. I flipped on the light and remained sleepless the rest of the night.
This was not an isolated incident. It occurred many times. It got to the point that I was afraid to go to sleep at night for fear that I would be awakened by this incubus. I slept with an icon of Jesus, a photo of Paramahansa Yogananda and other sacred objects within my sight for protection. It did no good. I began to think someone was practicing black magic on me. I did all manner of crazy things I had read about or invented to safeguard myself. Salt around the bed does nothing!
The location where I slept didn’t matter. I had the nightmarish episodes even away from home. One time I was visiting my parents for Thanksgiving and it happened in the room next to where they slept. I finally gained relief through work done with me by an intuitive who understands these issues, and the prayers for protection that I sent out at night before retiring. I also learned that I couldn’t be lax in this respect. If I am, there seems to be an opening left for the ill-intended spirit to return. There have still been occasions when I’ve been awakened as before. But perhaps because I’m no longer as frightened by it, just angry that it shows up, its manifestation isn’t full-blown and leaves as soon as I’m completely alert.
It seems to be an opportunist though, and looks for even slight avenues. The mystery of what those are remains unsolved by me. Even though I’ve written of dramatic times and esoteric events in this book to illustrate points, I am generally on an even keel emotionally. In fact, my life and consciousness have been such the past few years that I live in a state of continual gratitude. Just because I’m feeling my absolute best, that state doesn’t act as a deterrent.
During such a time, I had been reading in bed before going to sleep. It was about 10 p.m. I reached over, turned out the light and lay down. I felt Cypress jump on the bed to join me. Immediately, she started hissing and spitting. A tussle was going on. I thought Cypress and Chloe, my other female, had gotten into it, there being jealousy between them. But no other cat was on the bed. I will also clarify here that while Cypress’ personality is headstrong and rambunctious, her usual state of being is fairly quiet.
Suddenly, I felt something like a net coming down over my entire body trying to imprison me. I clawed off this unseen ensnarement. Throwing myself over on my side, I reached for the light, flipping it on. The clock showed only a few minutes from the time I’d shut off the light to go to sleep. Cypress was looking wild-eyed and I wasn’t feeling so swell myself.
What was it about me that attracted such manifestations? This was the question that greatly disturbed and bemused me. It was particularly bewildering to me because I’d heard from more than one source in popular modern spiritual culture that the lighter the energy you carry, the more impossible it is for darker energy to reach you. I swallowed that doctrine for a period of time and felt frustrated with myself that I was carrying such negativity that drew the darkness to me like a magnet. Yet, I knew my strong intent for alignment with the Divine. I had also had manifestations of Jesus appear to me as well.
Was I mentally unstable? Hardly. Those who know me consider me to be one of the most grounded, sane people they know, in spite of my numerous mystical experiences. People regularly come to me to collaborate toward their own healing.
Then I began to realize that, hidden between the words in spiritual text, alluded to but not explicit, are mentions of the dark realm with which I had been dealing for years. From writings by mystics and stories about them, I finally recognized that when you open yourself to the spiritual path, you can’t pick and choose. You open yourself — to everything. Even Jesus wrestled with demons.
It was particularly comforting to me to come across the writings of Kyriacos Markides. In some ways, he has likened himself to Carlos Castenada in that he is a participant observer. But his foci are the present-day mystics who live on the Greek peninsula of Mount Athos and his native island of Cyprus, dwelling under the auspices of the Greek Orthodox Church. He reports openly about the esoteric happenings that are part and parcel in the lives of these monks and hermits. One of the areas they periodically inhabit has to do with darkness similar to that I’ve described from my own life.
This fact validated for me my own dawning understanding, whose roots were first implanted in me through the hints that St. Teresa of Avila and others left. If we persevere on the path of purification and alignment with Divinity, it is possible that we may begin to leave the piddling trials brought about by mental convolution, or at least intersperse them with something else.
We enter another territory entirely. And its terrain is completely unknown and invisible to us. The code may be kept undecipherable.
Dangerous Liaisons
I remember being referred to once as “dangerous” by someone. She thought she should protect others from being exposed to my philosophy of conscious living. In one sense, she may be correct, at least certainly well intentioned. It can be a rough ride, particularly if you stand starkly on the path. Many may not be up to it. Those who are eventually find their way and don’t really even have to look for it. Their own intent singles them out.
But what is really dangerous? Isn’t it the places where some of us keep ourselves, perpetuating falsehoods, being horribly unjust and cruel to ourselves, and perhaps others? Is it risky to hold out the possibility of being completely in touch with your own heart?
The real threat is the doorway you don’t go through for intent’s purpose. The hazard is the obstinate glue of intention that keeps you stuck. This is the peril.
The recurring opportunity of Separation from one phase of the journey to another offers the points of departure for descent into the underworld and your own form of dark night. If you choose not to move into it, you may never find out how sleepy and foolish you have been.
It’s only when we illuminate things that fear is disarmed. It’s only by jumping into the void that we end up somewhere else.
Lose your footing.
Or — better yet — swan dive.
All events described in this book are true. Some of the names have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.
I will publish chapters every few days until complete. Find links in the Table of Contents below.
Table of Contents
Chapter Three: The Inner Point
Chapter Four: Intentful Existence
Chapter Five: Connecting With the Cosmos
Chapter Seven: The Space of No Need
Chapter Eight: Conflicts on the Path
Chapter Nine: The Edge of Limitation
Chapter Ten: Asking the Answer
Chapter Eleven: Living With Contrast
Chapter Thirteen: Unconditional Being
Standing Stark: The Willingness to Engage
Copyright 2004 by Carla Woody. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be directed to: Kenosis Press, P.O. Box 10441, Prescott, AZ 86304, [email protected].
