"If it feels good, do it."

         - Anonymous, circa 1968

"Turn on, tune in, drop out"

         - Timothy Leary, 1966

I suppose it was inevitable that sex, drugs, the sixties drug culture and drug music had to be mentioned somewhere in this process. Given a person with my dispositions and confessed background they seem almost mandatory.

My experience with any of those things other than the music was limited at most. Let's just say that the statute of limitations ran decades ago on any crimes of indulgence I might have committed and that I have tried to make personal amends to any individuals whose trust or personalities I might have violated. Up to the point that finally I partook of those forbidden fruits, however, their allure was ever present.

How could any young person not find appealing the suggestion that enlightenment and understanding could be obtained at the mere cost of a pill or a puff of smoke? Where could the harm be found in the comfort and fulfillment granted by the passionate embrace of another person who deems you a worthy candidate of her affections? Maybe that Bible they told me about in Sunday School banned adultery, but I wasn't married. If a person kept his consumption of mood and conscious altering substances under control, where did the Bible condemn those things?

Still I had some nagging sense that both were somehow wrong. Worse than that, I dreaded the disappointment my father would suffer when I eventually got caught. (I always got caught. I did not know then how fortunate I was to get caught. I just always did.)

While the youth of America frolicked all the way from The Summer of Love to the gruesome murder at Altamont, I suffered in a hippie hell of my own creation. Because I kept listening to the music and watching the movies and reading the books, I wanted to participate in all the indulgences those genres romanticized and glorified. At the same time something inside me held me back. I would like to think my reluctance was due to some virtue, but the real restraining power was nothing less than fear. Fear that I'd get caught. Fear that my father would be disgraced or humiliated. Fear that I'd go to hell. Fear of whatever other unknowns were out there. I was paralyzed by fear. Stuck in limbo wanting to tune into whatever felt good, doing it, and dropping out of the guilt associated with all those feelings.

It was at this point in my life that the vague, powerless message I heard at my church became almost less than useless to me. By this time my family had moved to a different congregation; one that at least had the good sense to teach that there were consequences to one's actions. If they ever explained how to deal with the guilty feelings associated with my past actions or how to get help avoiding the same mistakes again in the future, I never heard it. All I heard was "Guilty!"

In an environment like that I suppose it was inevitable that I eventually would give in to my baser desires. Absence might make the heart grow fonder, but abstinence only made me want all the more the things I could not have that others were enjoying.

My stint of unbridled self-indulgence was longer than it was deep, but it evntually was as thorough as I was able to make it. After a few years I thought I understood Solomon's words, "all is vanity." Unfortunately my dilemma was magnified. At that point I suffered the vanity and frustration of the emptiness my egocentricity necessarily generated but I also had accumulated a number of unhealthy habits along the way.

Keith Moon, who likely was the greatest drummer of the rock 'n roll era, already had gotten Peter Townshend's wish: "I hope I die before I grow old." Keith's body aged well beyond his years because he never found a way off of that same roller coaster. I was looking for a soft spot of ground where I might land relatively unharmed but I still could not muster the guts to jump out of the car.

I had proved the truth of the old Kinks' song, "Timothy Leary's dead." What a bummer!

Vanity, vanity. All is vanity. There is nothing new under the sun.

"Most people get their thinking in this generation like we tend to get colds,

through casual with complete strangers."

"We've got some world views, some philosophies we've got to get rid of. "
                                  
                           -  Stephen Mansfield, April 5, 2010



There is no way I can improve on that quote, but I will provide some information about its author.  Stephen Mansfield wrote the authorized biography of Derek Prince, perhaps the most important Bible teacher of the second half of the 20th Century.  Here is a link to his publisher's bio on him.  (How many people would have the guts to write books about the Faith of Barak Obama and about the Faith of George W. Bush?)  Here is a link to Stephen's website.

"A Shaolin priest can walk through walls.

"It is said that listened for he cannot be heard; looked for he cannot be seen; felt he cannot be touched."

                                             - Kung Fu the television series, circa 1972

I was raised in a mainline protestant church.  They taught me all the old Bible stories like Jonah and the whale, David and Goliath, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  I learned about Moses and the exodus of the children of Israel from their bondage in Egypt.  They taught me to sing "Jesus Loves Me" and the words to many traditional hymns.  There were a few people there who obviously loved me and everyone else with an unselfish love I could not comprehend.  By the time I was 13 or 14 I began to sense that something was missing. 

One day I something provoked me to read the story of how Moses was sent to confront Pharaoh.  Perhaps I'd seen a movie about the story that made me wonder about a certain part of what happened.  For whatever reason, I found the part of the story in Exodus Chapter 7 where Moses threw down his rod and it became a serpent.  The next couple of verses said that Pharaoh's magicians threw down their rods and they became serpents too.  Moses' snake ate the other snakes, but even a snake that could be eaten by a more powerful snake sounded a good deal more spectacular to me than whatever it was I was seeing around that church at that time. 

Even at that age I frequently found myself wondering what else was out there, what might be around the next corner.  I was just beginning to become aware that evil existed in the world.  I had experienced some disappointments.  Several friends had lost parents.  Many things did not turn out the way it seemed they should.  If God was good enough and big enough to turn sticks into snakes for Moses, why should he not be willing to do something similar for people today? 

I developed an expectation that there must be some sort of power in the universe, something more useful than the old stories and songs they taught me in Sunday school.  If God had been in the power business before, I saw no reason why he could not and should not be so now.  The people at my church either had no idea how to tap into that power or else they saw no need to grace me with their special knowledge.  Somewhere I had gotten the impression that shamen or other people who did wield this sort of power did exist in "the mystic east."  My ambition became to go there and study with those people and learn the knowledge of that power. 

Hindsight teaches me that my intentions at the time pretty much were all selfish.  I did not know any better.  I was a kid trying to find his way in a world that was getting bigger by the day.  That meant I was growing comparatively smaller.  I had no use for this powerless religion they were teaching me at that church.  I surmised it was good enough to hold me over and keep me out of hell-jail until I could find the real thing, but I believed there must be more something useful, more practical; and I wanted to find it. 

My perception has changed dramatically since then, but I think I understand better now what was happening within me at the time.  The people at that church were doing the best they could do and were sharing all they had with me.  The problem was that none of it seemed very practical at the time.  It might get my ticket punched to board the train headed up rather than the one headed down when I died, but what other use was it?  I needed help now.  I did not need ideas or stories about what God had done for some other guy who had died centuries before the language I spoke had even come into existence!  I needed something with some oomph to it and I needed it as soon as I could get it.  If these guys did not have it, I was willing to seek it among those who claimed they did. 

I also understand now that, as stubborn as I have been my entire life, I began to develop at that stage capacity to admit that I might be wrong about a few things.  How valuable that has been throughout the remaining years of my life. 

The Kung Fu television show did not appear for another several years, but something in the spirit of that show depicts what I had hoped or expected to find at the end of my search.  I did not know what it was.  I did need to believe that there must be something more than was being shown to me. 

Without being able to articulate it so effectively as my buddy Max Reed, I was just beginning to realize that I did not know what I did not know.

"Turn on your radio, baby, listen to my song,"

is a line from a little known song from Harry Nillson's Son Of Schmillsson album.  (He perhaps first came to prominence in America by scoring the soundtrack to Midnight Cowboy.)  I listened to that song dozens of times from my college years on. That is its sole connection to our topic.  The human brain works just like a computer in at least one way: Garbage in, garbage out. 

My father loved radios and always had at least one short wave receiver around the house so he could listen to international broadcasts and eavesdrop on air traffic controller and sea going vessel communications. My grandmother gave me a small transistor radio for Christmas when I was seven years old. It was my first step toward becoming more like my dad and it gave me a tuning dial and volume knob I could control all by myself.

I started out listening to the same station my parents tuned in every time we climbed into the family car.  They played soundtrack songs and artists like Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennet at night and featured hosts like Arthur Godfrey on weekends.  Weekday mornings they broadcast news, weather and traffic updates and listener call-in shows focusing on local events and special interests like cooking, gardening and home decorating. 

My older brother got his own radio that same Christmas.  Our still older cousin was one of my brother's biggest influences during those years, so after just a few months my brother began mimicking our cousin by using his radio to listen to rock-n-roll and blues stations.  My brother was my role model, so I naturally began tuning to the same stations he had "found."  I did not appreciate the blues at the time, but rock-n-roll?  It mesmerized me. 

It all was pretty tame stuff.  The artists included Roy Orbison, Chubby Checker, The Tokens, Ricky Nelson, Leslie Gore, Mary Wells, Dion and the Belmonts, Neil Sedaka, Elvis Presley, Sam Cook, Ray Charles, The Ventures and The Contours.  These were songs about cars, puppy love, dancing, hanging out and other high school aged activities.  Some spoke of holding hands and kissing.  That kissing idea did not appeal to a second or third grade boy, but the music was exciting and the words beckoned me to come and discover the new world they described. 

Music had changed by the time I reached the fifth or sixth grade.  The British Invasion was in full force.  Bob Dylan had appeared on the cover of Time and Newsweek.  The Beatles and The Rolling Stones battled one another for the top spot in the English speaking public consciousness.  The music from my radio became more sophisticated and more interesting as the artists competed for the attention of the radio listening and record buying pubic: The Who, The Zombies, The Doors, everything from the Motown label.  Bubble Gum raised its ugly head, and The Monkeys television played off the box office success of The Beatles' two block buster movies.  The music changed by degrees at ever accelerating rates so we were able to accept it but still not be truly aware of how rapidly it was happening.  All these varied, interesting and alluring sounds beckoned me to turn on my radio and listen to their songs; and I did -- every chance I got. 

The lyrics were becoming more sexually suggestive and anti-authoritarian.  Like the music, the lyrics changed in degrees, acclimating us as we followed it wherever it took us.  None of that really bothered me.  I knew that stuff was out there, somewhere beyond my grasp.  What it did do, without my being aware of the process, was create in me a hunger -- no a craving, for the fruit of those trees without telling me how to obtain it.  Hormones alone would have produced many of these changes in a boy of my age, but the music added an attractive excitement to the entire concept and the lyrics began to produce images in my psyche that were hard wired to the feelings being generated by both the hormones and the music. 

The Woodstock Festival took place about two weeks before my 15th birthday.  Ninth and tenth graders of those years were becoming aware of the military draft and of the fear and hostility many of our immediate predecessors had toward authority figures in general and toward the Vietnam War in particular.  The music became more edgy to maintain the audience's attention and the imagery more dark and extreme. 

I do not offer any of this to demean or to denigrate any of the music or the lyrics of those decades.  I still enjoy a great deal of it and listen to it from time to time.  The point is that all three of those influences; the hormones, the music and the lyrics, were writing lasting impressions on my psyche and I did nothing to filter them or to influence their impact on me.   

It was exciting and stimulating, so I listened.  I did not just play this stuff as background noise.  I listened.  I played these songs over and over and over again.  I listened to the music.  I listened to the lyrics.  (I had a difficult time deciphering many of them on those cheap speakers, but my imagination was more than happy to fill in the blanks my ears created.)  I felt it.  I lived the music and let the music and lyrics take me wherever its creators desired.  Wasn't that why everyone listened to music? 

Again, the point is not that the music was good or bad, helpful or harmful.  Nor the lyrics.  The point is that they necessarily did impact me.  Without asking my attention, giving me any warning from the Surgeon General, or alerting me to the havoc that was to be wreaked on the lives of so many of the individuals who wrote and performed so many of my favorite songs, those songs had a dramatic and lasting impact on my view of the universe and of my place in it.  The thought never occurred to me that the people writing those songs usually were under 25 years old with almost no real wisdom tempering experience.  I was just an impressionable kid, for gosh sakes! 

Hopefully few other people were as naive (or stupid) as I was.  I cannot speak from their experience.  One purpose of this exercise is to learn from my own experience; and mine had taught me to believe in a world where a life of pleasure seeking and contemplative introspection eventually would help me come into contact with some sort of soul mate whose primary source of joy and fulfillment would to give me pleasure by anticipating and meeting my every whimsical desire.  That would free me to ingratiate the world with all my wisdom and clever thoughts and to indulge my senses and imagination with still more music, ideas, adventures and the occasional chemical influence.  Life would be win-win.  I would get the best the world had to offer and would bless the world with my best in return. 

I had no idea I'd become such a narcissistic twit.  I honestly thought I was just like everybody else.  I'd never bothered to sit down and measure out how this Nirvana actually could take place or how it could benefit anyone other than me.  That idea appeared in just enough of the songs I heard to let me believe I actually had made a contribution (I suppose by having agreed with the premise of a song that some form of giving to others was altruistic), but the ideas never resulted in any action that actually might have generated any sort of benefit for any person other than myself. 

I do not blame the songs for where I eventually found myself.  I do not blame my parents, society, my peer groups, or anyone else.  Blame has nothing to do with this exercise or with what really matters in life.  That at least is my present perspective. 

I was what I was.  And I did not know it.  I was not aware of my self-serving state of mind or personality.  Even if I had been aware of it, I had accessed no information or influences that might have suggested that a completely self serving state of mind was not the optimal position in the universe for any sentient creature.  Why should it not be. 

I was what I was because of the decisions I had made and the actions I had decided to take (and not to take) up to that point.  My universe was tiny and contained.  I did not know what I did not know. 

Fortunately for me, I was to begin to encounter things I did not know.  I have learned some of their lessons.  I have not learned others.  An additional four decades of (mostly conscious) experience have opened my awareness to many things I did not know back then.  I am at least partially aware now that any life lived with that sort of limited awareness would have been worse than wasteful for a person like me.  My only hope for any relief lay in the necessity that I acknowledge that my information was incomplete.  There actually were things I did not know and I had no idea how useful and important they were.  I did not know what I did not know. 

I presently am aware of how crucial it is that I continue this process until I draw my last breath.  I still don't know what I don't know.  My sense of personal fulfillment and my value to others can improve only to the extent that I continue to throw off the shackles created within my mind by the various influences and events I have experienced throughout my life. 

I don't know what I don't know, and the possibility that something new might be revealed today creates possibility of continuing purpose in my life. 

The songs were just one of the many influences that created mental and emotional prisons within my head.  There were many others.  I selected this topic only to help demonstrate how the process takes place in our psyches over time, usually while we are not even aware of them. 

What about you?  Are there things, events or experiences that have impacted the way you view the world and your place in it?  There must be, whether you are aware of them or not.  If you cannot name at least three, then perhaps you should set aside a few minutes each day until you can name at least three of them.  After all, you don't know what you don't know. 

Until next time,