Frameshifting: A Path to Wholeness

Preface

I was raised in Ft. Worth, Texas by an avowed agnostic father and a lukewarm Episcopalian mother. Dad refused to be a hypocrite, so he wouldn't go to church. Mother has this vague feeling that she should give us some religious education, so she began taking us to the local Episcopal church. My uncle Kellner (Dad's older brother) was a celibate Episcopal priest so we became Episcopalians. I gave it my all, even becoming an acolyte (similar to an altar boy of the Catholic faith). One Sunday, the priest and I were getting ready for the service, and, being a curious boy of 14, I asked him Why do I have to say all this Latin in the service? I don't know what it means.

The priest replied, It is not important for you to know what it means; it is a ritual of the church.

I am not saying it anymore if I don't know what it means! I replied.

He said, firmly, It is not important that you know what it means.

I left the church that day and have not returned. I did not have a formal religious practice for many years after that. As I approached age thirty, I began to have a gnawing feeling that there was a Higher Power at work in the Universe, but it was not to be found in my Episcopal church experience. So, I began what I call my religious dilettante experience. I started going to every church I could think of, from Baptist to Catholic, from Church of Christ to Methodist, from Pentecostal to Baha'i, from Presbyterian to Christian, from Unitarian to Unity. I looked at them all and came away feeling empty. So, I finally relaxed the search and just lived my life.

This search for ultimate truth is what Joseph Campbell called the hero's journey. At some point, all of us seem to become disenchanted with the promises of materialism and start the search for ultimate truth. Here is a wonderful quote from the Self-Realization Fellowship papers of Yogananda:

What is the Best religion?

Most people who follow a variety of teachings stick to none. Their choices are usually influenced by imitation or curiosity, rather than by logical reason or necessity. Such students like to listen incessantly to new ideas from new personalities, without ever making an effort to assimilate the ideas. They may be compared to one who sets out to reach a certain destination, and becomes enamored with walking that he wanders here and there, forgetting all about his goal.

Some students are led by curiosity to adopt a certain spiritual path, hoping to reach the destination of truth and wisdom, but they often get sidetracked by their insatiable curiosity As they keep trying new ways for the thrill of a change, they never reach their goal. These people are interested in listening to spiritual truths but not in making the effort to apply those truths to everyday life and to realize them through experience, within the Self.

(NOTE: The difference is that I have tried to apply them.)

I wandered about, looking for an elusive source of spiritual truth. Then, in 1970, I had a major transformative experience. I read Baba Ram Dass‘ Be Here Now and it changed my world view. I was drawn like a magnet to what seem to me to be a basic underlying truth. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced in any church setting. I suddenly knew that I had to develop a spiritual path that led me to the truth in my personal experience.

But first, allow me to relay some personal history. I was married in 1963 at the age of 21 to my childhood sweetheart, Jo Lynn. In 1965, I went into the US Army and was sent to Vietnam. Although I came away from that experience sobered, a peace activist and a skeptical observer of USA motives over there, I still wanted to return to the relative calm of my life back home. Jo Lynn seemed glad to see me; what I didn't know at that time (and found out from friends), was that, while I was gone for that year, Jo Lynn came unglued and literally started having affairs with men, one after another. With today's eyes, I know that Jo Lynn, coming from a very dysfunctional family situation, was deeply wounded and counted on me for emotional stability. With me gone, she literally fell apart and began looking for love in all the wrong places. Desperate to keep the marriage together, we entered counseling and seemed to be doing better.

One Saturday morning in the spring of 1968, Jo Lynn sat me down in the study of our modest suburban home and she said I am leaving you.

Shocked, I asked her Why?

Then she said Because you are too boring.

It hit me like a ton of bricks because I knew she was right. I had been so focused on my career (I got an MBA from the University of Houston in 1968 and was well on my way to a partnership in Peat, Marwick Mitchell, a huge international accounting/consulting firm). I was wearing my three piece suits and wing-tipped shoes. My consciousness was so linear and focused on material success, I was completely oblivious to my counterculture wife who was smoking marijuana and playing music as a sociology student at the University. So, then, I asked the pivotal question: What do I have to do to persuade you to stay?

She replied Well, it wouldn't hurt for you to loosen up a bit; would you be willing to smoke some marijuana with me and some of my friends?

I said Sure, feeling somewhat scared and apprehensive. We went to the apartment of her friend (whom I later discovered was also her lover). Walking in, we saw her friend and his date in the living room with 10 marijuana joints rolled up on the coffee table. The four of us smoked the first three joints and the three of them were laughing and rolling on the floor. I felt nothing. Not to be embarrassed, I smoked the other seven by myself. When the intoxication of the herb began to work on me, too, I had the most powerful, intense experience of my life to that point.

To describe the experience doesn't seem to do it justice but here goes; it was like being drawn to an abyss of nothingness by a magnetic force, and it took all my will power to pull myself back, time and time again. This went on for 12 straight hours. As you can imagine, by the end of this experience, I was irreparably changed. In light of my current understanding of consciousness, I now know what happened to me. I will describe this process later.

Jo Lynn decided to stay with me. I now know that I was so insecure at that point in my life that a divorce seemed like abject failure, and was, therefore, intolerable. To pursue her passion for education, Jo Lynn left Chicago (where I was working on my PhD degree in management at Northwestern University in Evanston), and enrolled in Antioch College in Putney, VT, to pursue a Master's degree in Education. I was working away at my dissertation and, once day, I got a phone call from Jo Lynn asking me to come to Vermont and live as a threesome with her new boy friend. I knew my marriage was finally over (circa 1971). I told her I was filing for divorce. The year was 1971 and I was 30 years old.

This catalyzed a mystical experience for me. Despondent over the failure of my first marriage, I was delighted when an old friend came to town for a visit. He said We need to get you out on the town for some fun; you are too morose! I agreed. That first night, we went to a local dance club. The room was packed and my friend quickly found a woman to dance with. I felt apart from the proceedings and just stood there and watched. The band was a Santana wannabe band and were loud and fun. As I watched and basically felt sorry for myself, I felt a presence behind me. I turned around and saw one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. She was about 5’7" tall, slender, beautiful brown hair to her waist, and gorgeous features. She was looking at me intently. We started talking and she was clearly interested in me. As the evening wore down, at 2 AM, we left and she asked me to come to her place. I agreed. It was February in Chicago and very cold.

We drove the short distance to her house and she invited me in. As we came in the living room of the apartment, I saw what looked like an altar in the corner. I asked her about it and she told me, quite innocently, that she was a witch and a trance medium. I asked her what that meant; she said she used the witchcraft in positive ways and could receive messages from the other side. We put on George Harrison's All Things Must Pass on the stereo; one thing led to another and soon we were passionately making out. All of a sudden, she stopped me and said I can't do this!

I said OK and we stopped. Half hour later, we were passionately embracing again. Again, she stopped me. By this time, I felt this was pretty crazy-making, so I said that I was going to leave. I got dressed, went outside to Lake Shore Drive and hitchhiked home (my car was in the body shop, having been wrecked the previous week by a friend). I was picked up by a car full of gay guys and they took me home after they discovered that I was a raging heterosexual. I slept fitfully for about 3 hours.

Eager to return to that woman's place so I could discover what was really going on, I hitchhiked back down and she was home. The apartment was full of young men (ages approximately 16-20 years). She explained that these were her boys and they were there to protect her from danger. This, of course, seemed weird. It got weirder very quickly. I stayed there all day, and we smoked marijuana, played music and ate a lot. As the evening wore on, I got very tired and asked if I could go crash in the bedroom. I got a funny look but she said OK. I fell asleep instantly. I awoke suddenly with all of them (the boys and the woman) standing around the bed saying You must leave now! Grumbling, I got up, got dressed and went out into the cold again. I arrived home at around 1 AM.

Sleeping fitfully again, I got up and went down for the second time. She was there and explained to me that the boys were worried that I was just waiting for her to come join me in bed so we could make love. They were jealous, she said. This time, she didn't have the boys with her and she asked me to spend the night. I agreed. We made love all night long and it was fantastic. We watched the sun come up. Then, she asked me to leave again as the boys were due any minute. I left. I called her from home and said This is just too weird for me! I never saw her again. This altered reality is still inexplicable to this day. Obviously, my grief and my openness to experience had propelled me into a reality where non-ordinary events could occur.

What do all these seemingly unrelated experiences, i.e., reading Be Here Now, the witch experience, the marijuana experience, and being told that I am boring have to do with each other? Now, I see that they produced altered states of consciousness. In Ken Wilber‘s landmark audiotape collection, Kosmic Consciousness (2004), he calls states (states of consciousness with different levels of conscious awareness that are transitory in one's experience) a primary ingredient in the evolution of consciousness to higher stages (levels of conscious development that are relatively stable over time) of development. Apparently, all these experiences served to catapult me into different ways of understanding my personal reality. And, with each of these experiences, my conscious experience of reality shifted, however imperceptibly. I now see that this has all been part of a journey from a fear-based ego sense of selfhood (or identity) to a larger, more holistic definition of identity (who I really am).

Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose in life? These questions have haunted humanity for eons. Our society provides little help. The messages we get in the media are you are your stuff (consumerism). From the churches, we often get you are a miserable sinner (the mainstream Christian perspective). Even the more enlightened religions say that you are a creation of God (but separate from God). From business, we get you are your job or career. From school, you get you are your mind. On the question of purpose, there is scant help in our society. Work hard (The Protestant Work Ethic), Raise a family, Lead a righteous life is about all the help we get.