Autobiography Of My Spiritual Life

Autobiography of my Spiritual Journey
Chapter 1 Growing up in Massachusetts
My mother gave birth to me at age 32. My father was and is a real loser and to this day she regrets having had a child with him. But she felt time was running out and if she didn’t get pregnant soon it would be too late for her. She was married to the idiot so I guess at the time it seemed like a good idea. She pretty much brought me up alone while my father spent his time and money on drinking and drugs. It was very hard on her for about three years and then my future step dad came into our lives and everything changed.
He looked like a hippie with long hair and a beard and was just traveling around when he came across my dad in a bar. They hit it off right away because my step dad, Tom, was into spirituality and my dad, Fred, was pretending to be spiritual at the time. So one day Fred took Tom over to meet the wife and kid (me, I was under 5 years old at the time) Well my mom, Kate, and Tom formed this incredible bond at first sight which has lasted over 30 years now. Fred could read the writing on the wall so he told Tom that having a wife and child was interfering with his spiritual life and he wanted out. So he asked Tom if he would take care of us. He said yes he would and that’s how it all started.
Now my mom was the manager of a recording studio just down the road and my dad worked there too, on the grounds. So naturally my mom got Tom a job there taking care of the horses which were there to entertain the rock stars who came to the country side recording studio. Now the owner of the studio, Ralph, was your average good looking, rich playboy type, who pretty much got into the pants of every female who came to Windy Hill Farm, the name of the recording studio. He of course wanted to have sex with my mom but I think she was the only female on the place that didn’t go to bed with him. The more she said no the more he wanted her, so he had one of his female minions make a play for Fred hoping that would break up the marriage. It came as no surprise that Fred fell for the ruse and had a sexual encounter with this girl and this was why Fred wanted out of his marriage to my mom.
But unfortunately for Ralph, Tom and my mom were an item by then. So Ralph told his female minion that she didn’t need to have sex with Fred because he was pretty much out of the picture. So when she broke off with Fred, he went over to Tom and said he wanted his wife and kid back. Like I said at the beginning of this story, my dad was and is one of the biggest losers I’ve ever come in contact with. Anyway Tom told him it was too late because the relationship had progressed to the point where people would be hurt if it ended now. So my mom and Tom left the recording studio and got married. They bought a herd of cows from a neighbor and started milking cows together for a living.
This is the point where my mom and Tom started on an unbelievable spiritual journey of their own. My mom told me how she went to borrow the money for the cows with only $5000 in the bank and stacks of cord wood that we were planning to sell. The banker who she approached with this idea asked her to come back in a few days so he could think it over. During those days, the bankers wife had a mis-carriage and by the time he talked again with my mom, he was so messed up that he wasn’t even sure of the amount of money she needed but did indeed make her the loan at that time. Now from what I understand, that was the last start up loan made for a small dairy operation ever. If you go to a bank now and ask to borrow money for cows, you will immediately discover the truth of what I am saying.
At this point in my story I would like to introduce a couple of articles written by my mom and step dad which will give the reader an idea of what was created.
When we bought the cows( which was my wife’s’ idea)
everyone we knew agreed we had no chance of making it
work. I looked at the endeavor as a spiritual
experience right from the start. Getting the money to
buy the cows, finding and setting up a barn to move them to,
hauling away the manure with just a young green
pair of horses, and feeding them with no land and no
equipment was all one miracle after another for me.
For a year we milked the 30 or so cows we bought
and lived off the sale of the milk. Then one day the
man we were renting the barn from decided he was going
to quit his job and milk cows for a living. He
figured if idiots like us could make it, he should
have no trouble at all. So he wanted us out of his
barn right away. I remember telling Kate we had to
wait for God to come into the barn.
Things got very tense after awhile because the
owner didn’t want us there. I told a friend to watch
closely because I was going to pass a herd of cows
through the eye of a needle. And sure enough God came
into the barn in the form of a cattle dealer who moved
us to our third barn 50 miles away. After landing on
the farm a man I didn’t know came up and told me he
was going to take back his mower. I told him that at
this point in my life I didn’t think anyone had the
power to take away anything I really needed. He never
did take that mower away.
Chapter 2 Milking Cows in Pennsylvania
Now this is my moms’ take on the operation;
My husband Tom and I bought a small herd of dairy cows ten years ago. Both of us college-educated, both recovering from devastating divorces, we were 37 at the time, living a simple life without telephone or television, hauling cord wood from the farm we were care taking with our draft horses to support ourselves. We had a savings of $5000 and no other possessions to speak of; yet a bank agreed to lend us the money for the cows.
Through the years the cows have remained the central thread of our lives, around which a tapestry, so to speak, has been woven. One puts one’s essence into them and they, thriving, return the favor. For me the simple act of milking has time and again dispelled my fears. For me it was the cows; for Tom it was more the horses, at first simply his relationship with them and later what they did together– the spreading of manure, the planting, the harvesting. And we are ever captivated by the idea of creating something out of nothing, the idea that through the act of creating comes your sustenance. We have learned that somehow, if we milk our cows work our horses and stay together, everything will be all right.
But at first it was just the struggle. We knew very little about cows and farming, and we were renting a farm in Massachusetts where, it seems, farming even with tractors has become obsolete. The barn was dilapidated and the machinery in varying stages of disrepair, so as we worked and slowly paid off our loan we looked for a farm to buy.
There is no rational explanation for the fact that we settled on a 110-acre farm in Western Pennsylvania previously owned by an old order Amishman. It simply seems that it was pre-destined. When at last we moved we had the strong feeling of finally being where we were suppose to be, and that we were suddenly protected from the onslaught of the raging and unfathomable forces which constantly besieged us and against which we had no defense.
From the beginning the Amish steadied us and helped us. We began to assemble the necessary horse-drawn machinery and learn the fine art of farming the simple way. Often it was a case of finding out how a neighbor was doing a certain task and doing the same thing. We have developed variations, often because we have less help available.
As we became more interconnected with our Amish neighbors we came to understand the basic premise underlying their philosophy; your own well-being and success depends on that of your neighbors.
It was a hot, dry windy October afternoon when our barn caught fire. We were preparing for our third winter in Pennsylvania by adding on a space to the existing barn for bred heifers. We had both been sick off and on for an entire year and felt over-burdened by the amount of work. Tom’s son, recently married, had decided against coming to live on the farm. My daughter, Sue, was doing her best to help out with the chores and all the work of making a dairy work but in the end there was too much stress and work, and something broke.
Within an hour the barn was down and probably half of the community had arrived. Our cows were gathered in a neighbor’s barn and trucked three or four at a time to surrounding Amish barns. Meantime, the eldest Amishman arranged for a rental situation for us until we could rebuild. The next day 20 Amishmen assembled at the rented barn to make things ready; the following day we moved the cows in and shipped milk once again.
The following Monday a dozen teams and wagons hauled away the debris and with the fire finally extinguished rebuilding started in earnest. Teams worked in the wood hauling logs for beams, and each morning a crew of 20 men showed up for work at the barn site. Tom and I took care of the cows mornings; silage had to be moved over there and manure had to be hauled; afternoons Tom worked with the crew and sometimes I had time to bake a cake or some pies for them. Evenings we returned to the rented barn to milk.
The barn raising took place exactly a month to the day later. Two hundred people (mostly Amish, although some English farmers came too), ate two meals here that day, and as the sun set the last of the metal roofing was nailed on. Three more weeks were required to finish the barn.
The Amish foreman could see that we still needed help and agreed to allow his teen-aged son David to work with us during plowing, planting and harvesting time. As David and Tom spend time together they learn from each other; our experience is truly an interesting blend of two cultures.
Now back to my story.
My mom had to go to legal aid in order to get divorced from Fred and of course Fred wanted joint custody of me. My mom agreed but when she went to court and the judge heard all the gory details, he insisted that she have full custody over me. Now Fred didn’t go to the court hearing so he didn’t know what happened and nobody went out of their way to tell him. So about a year later my mom was milking a cow we had bought from someone and the cow kicked her and she had to go to the hospital. While she was in the hospital, Fred, my bio father, showed up at the farm with the girl who was Ralph’s minion and took me away from Tom and brought me into Ralph’s world again. Then Fred told my mom that in order to see me she would have to clear it with Jane, Ralph’s female minion. But when Kate returned from the hospital, Tom called up legal aid and explained what happened. The girl at legal aid wanted to know if my mom wanted Fred taken directly to jail or to see a judge first. Needless to say, Fred took me right back to my mom and Tom. Unfortunately this tug of war was having disastrous effects on me.
As I grew up on a dairy farm with my mother and step dad, mostly things were normal. My mom loved me and I loved her and we both worked very hard with my step dad to keep the dairy business running. At first I really wasn’t all that happy living with a herd of cows. The hard work wasn’t so bad after you got used to it, but what gave me the hardest time was going to school smelling like a cow. It would be terrible on the school bus when everyone would tease me and not come near me because I smelled so bad. I got in the habit of taking a bath everyday but all I had to do is step in the barn for morning chores and the kids on the bus and in school would know and make me feel like a freak. You would think that after awhile they would get tired of picking on me for the same stupid reason, but noooo, the teasing went on forever with no end in sight.
So one morning while my step dad was filling up the manure spreader he happened to look my way and saw that I was crying. He asked why and I told him I really didn’t want to face the kids at school today and I told him why. He then took my hand and led me to his pick-up truck and off we went to talk to the principal at school.
I did appreciate what he was trying to do for me but he still had on his farm clothes and his barn boots were thick with manure. But when we got to the school he took my hand and led me down the school corridor to the principal’s office. On the way the school kids went absolutely crazy holding their noses, making choking sounds and pressing themselves against the wall to get as far away from us as possible as we walked by. I was sure my step dad was leaving manure foot prints behind as we made our way to the principal’s office.
We opened the door and walked into a small receptionist room. When my dad shut the door behind us the smell of manure was so thick you could cut it with a knife, The secretary looked up from her paperwork with a look of horror on her face. My dad told her we were here to see the principal and she immediately got up, opened the door to the principal’s office, went in, and slammed it shut. I knew she was in there trying to figure out a way to get rid of us as fast as possible.
But then a strange thing happened. I was at the absolute lowest point of my entire life when I looked into my step-dads’ eyes. He was looking at me and I could feel his love pouring into me and replacing all the pain I was experiencing. He was smiling and I could tell that none of what was going on in this school mattered to him at all. I was the only person who mattered to him. And then for the first time in my life I let myself love him back and smiled. He then took my hand and we left the school.
The kids continued to tease me for awhile after that but it didn’t seem to bother me anymore. And then a miracle happened. They stopped teasing me.
And so I fell in love with my step dad. What that did to my life was amazing. At first it was more or less a parent child love but as time went on and I went deeper into his mind I became aware of the world on a deeper level. I began to understand that there was a mystical element to our dairy farm as well as the business angle. Most of us accept the money which comes into our lives without understanding how it was materialized. We never see that we either make our living out of love or fear. The ego and intellect can only use fear to create money. When one does it through love one must use one’s soul and it is very frightening for the ego and intellect.
I went through some difficult mental and emotional experiences before I was able to rid myself of fear and become motivated by love. This is how I was able to translate these experiences in my own mind. When I was a small girl there were no walls in my mind. I had friends and family who surrounded me and were accessible to me whenever I needed or even wanted them. Life was very nice. And then one day I came upon this giant wall. It made me curious as to what it was and why it was there but for the most part it was just another toy in my mind to throw my ball against or just walk along to see how far it ran. It did seem to go on forever and I would ask my mom about it and she would say it was just my imagination.
As I went from childhood to young adulthood I made a great discovery. I came to a corner in the wall. So now there were two walls in my mind running perpendicular to each other. This wall however made me unhappy because it got in the way of reaching some of the friends I liked to be with. So I would walk the length of this wall hoping it would end someplace where I could go around it. It didn’t end; instead I came to another wall which formed another corner. And so I found another piece of my world cut off from me. Now I didn’t walk the length of this wall because I was afraid it too would end in a corner and my mind would become a box. So I tried to break down the wall but only managed to hurt myself. I went to the people who were still in my world and told them how afraid I was of the encroaching walls but they all thought there was something wrong with me and suddenly the last wall locked into place and I was trapped and alone.
I was in a prison. I would get fed and kept alive but I was very unhappy. Voices would tell me what I had to think and do in order to get out of my box but I knew the minds behind the voices didn’t love me or even care about me. So I never gave in to the voices.
I became more and more withdrawn and fell into a meditative state and was unable to interact with the reality that used to be me. I could view my real world as though I was looking through a thick distorted glass, but I couldn’t make contact with it.
Then I became aware of another presence and when it touched my mind I knew it to be my step dad. He was able to break through my prison walls and find me here in never never land. He said my days of being a prisoner were over as he pointed at the light coming in from the hole he had made in my prison wall. He promised that light would never be blocked again by any wall. And he was right because from that time on my mind was like a barrel of a gun with Gods’ hand on the trigger pointing me where I needed to be.
By overcoming these mental problems I came to understand that love for each other and love for the cows is what kept our world intact. The money or things we needed to keep the farm running would always materialize as long as we didn’t give in to fear. I think it was at this point that my step dad started to become more my guru than a father figure to me. At first living in his mind was very comforting but then I would see circumstances start to form which I felt would crush us and I would become afraid. When I was unable to overcome the fear he would step in and turn the certain disaster I saw coming for us into the illusion that it really was. It became harder and harder for me to enter his mind when I was afraid because always the part of me which wasn’t anchored in love would be eliminated through mental pain. Until I learned to have faith in the power of love to materialize what I needed.
Unfortunately, my bio father, Fred, didn’t forget about me. He went back to court and got joint custody of me and took me away from the work on the farm every chance he got. Having little or no help on the farm caused an enormous amount of stress on my mom and step dad, until one day it was too much and the barn caught fire and burned to the ground. We are surrounded by Amish and they all showed up and helped us move our cows and animals into their barns. Then when things cooled down, they started taking away the old burned barn and started building us a new barn. Now when the new barn was finished and we started milking in it, the Amish foreman thought it would be a good idea if his 16 year old son came to help us with the farm work.
David, the foreman’s son, showed up and even at 16 made a great difference in our lives and especially mine. He was as dedicated to the farm and the cows as I was and we would work together day in and day out. It was wonderful! I got to the point where I was so grateful that I would do anything for him. He had about 15 brothers and sisters so he didn’t get much attention growing up so I became a big part of his life and he mine.
I remember going to Walmart with him and realizing that he had never been in a big store like that and started to get really nervous to the point where I had to take him outside. That’s how pure he was.
After a few years he got married and brought his wife to live on the farm too. But our relationship didn’t change. We were still dedicated to the cows and making the dairy work was the most important thing to us.
At this point I would like to relate a little day to day experiences of what we all went through to create this unique dairy situation.
The full and true story about Molly the cow as told by an eye witness.
It was a Sunday afternoon and I was alone on the farm. It was time to let the cows into the barn from a grey afternoon, and although this is a somewhat routine task, there can always be excitement. While I was letting the cows in, I noticed a black spot in the field as I poked my head out into the stiff wind above the oncoming herd. I thought it must have been Molly going into labor, so after all the cows were tied up I went down (about 1/4 mile) to see if I couldn’t convince her to bring up the calf when she came. Unfortunately she had lain down with the calf’s head sticking out her private area and was quite content with not getting up. A cold tongue hung limply out of the calf’s mouth so I figured there’d be a dead calf to deal with as well. In any case, I had to get the calf out and the cow up before Molly would come. I trekked back to the barn to find some implements of destruction where I discovered that David had come back from church. I told him my sad story and he agreed to give up his two or three hours a week off to come and help.
We finally pulled the calf out with baler twine and it flopped out onto the ground. The eyes rolled into the back of its head which was now twisted back along side of its rump. We helped it, and waited a long thirty seconds with it not breathing, until it coughed a breath of air into itself. Then we tried to get the cow up, which by some miracle she did do. However, her right back leg was completely useless and she flopped back down after a couple of steps.
This meant we weren’t going back to the barn at all and she had to get milked outside. Molly had to be somehow milked and given an intravenous needle of CMPK, all while laying on her back. We rolled over all 1500 lb. of her so that her udder and milk vein were accessible and dripped the CMPK into her vein and milked enough milk out of her to feed the living, breathing bull calf. We left her some hay, grain and water before we left her there for the night.
While David and I were heading back to the barn I told David that I just knew that when my mom got back she would go down to see Molly even if it is pitch dark out. Though both David and I are generally considered masters in the art of self torture, neither one of us can hold a candle to moms’ endurance in this discipline if the situation presents itself. This one had all the makings to be just one of those situations. Lo and behold when she came back from her French club meeting it was dark out and she wanted to find Molly. I gave her a propane lantern and pointed her in the right direction. It wasn’t minutes later, however, before she came back less chipper, having fallen into the mud behind the barn, followed shortly by her lantern flickering out.
Now mud is a word that doesn’t do justice to the substance lurking behind the barn. It is roughly composed of 50% soil and 50% cow manure and can change consistency with the weather. It can freeze to harden as cement, flow like a brown river in wet weather, or congeal to a combination of both and turn into a giant sucking sink hole. This latter condition is what my mom tried to cross in the dark without much success. Now something special may occur to anyone on any given trek across this wasteland (no pun intended). Without fail one boot will get stuck and when you try to pull it out, your foot comes out of the boot while the boot remains stuck in the mud. So there you are, balanced on one foot with your other foot dangling in the air. Usually by now you have an audience making bets as to whether or not your dangling foot will get put back in the boot before you fall down completely into the mud.
I digress. My mom made two or three trips to see Molly that night. I would like to bring your attention to one of these trips in particular. About 50 feet from where Molly lay is a brook from which we had earlier brought her water to drink, only to be refused in clear objection to drinking water in general. There is a rumor that a cow is more inclined to drink warm water as opposed to cold water. So my mom filled up a bucket of warm water and lugged it the 1/4 mile to see if Molly would drink it. As stated earlier I’m into self torture as much as the next guy but this feat with the warm water is beyond my humble abilities. Even the thought of this move makes the mind stop dead in its track for two distinct reasons. First of all, the intellect is assaulted by the fact that the night time chill will have cooled the water off by the time it gets to the cow, completely negating any reason for warming it in the first place. Then the ego is twisted out of shape by the undeniable fact that 99 times out of 100 the cow will ignore the water that you carried all that distance for her or she will simply tip it over the second you put it in front of her.. I draw the line at this degree of self torture.
Walking to the barn the following morning of Molly’s first night outside I couldn’t help but notice Molly laying in the same spot we left her the night before. in a sea of white from a heavy morning frost. From here the situation could go both ways. She could have died that night and though it would have been the worst outcome in this case, it would have been quick, and it would be a conclusion. If she got up we could have brought her in the barn and milked her, and life would be back to normal. But this would not be an open and shut case.
After morning milking, the cows all ran down to see her. They went to catch up on old times, and see how much hay she hadn’t eaten the night before, and would she mind if they all took some at the same time and step on her also. If you’re thinking that cows are a lot like people, you’d be right on. At one point in the day my mom’s horses went down to Molly and were a little less talkative. They rudely kicked her out of the way so they could get at her food. There were more trips that day to feed Molly, and then to try to get her up, but by nightfall the situation was still the same, and my mom mentioned bringing the vet in.. She’s done things after the vet has come and said the cow was going to die, and the cow came back to live a long life. Sometimes the vet has other things on his mind, or other stops to make that night; two minutes with the cow and he might say there’s nothing to do. He wants to get home and watch some TV before he goes to sleep. So do I but I still have the cow the next day. And the next ten days after that.
The following morning brought no change in the situation,
My mom had had a dream about Molly being picked up by a tractor bucket and dropped. It was getting to where something had to happen. When the cow trip is running smooth I keep a low profile, but when it comes to the edge of the cliff I become the fearless leader and do things. I’ve attempted moving cows in this condition but never with the story having a happy ending. But one always believes that this time it will be different. That just comes with the territory of leading the charge.
So my step dad and I took the farm truck down to the local junk yard to look for a hood from a junk car to roll Molly onto and drag her away. The junkyard guy had his own mud condition and we sloshed around in it for a while between mountains of trash until we saw the baby we were looking for. Then we carried it back to the truck through the muck where he sold it to us for one dollar. Hell, I’ve paid more then a dollar for a can of soda. I felt he had the hots for me and was hoping to get a date sometime soon.
On returning home I found David and two of his Amish friends working on an over hang for the barn, David told me he was approached by our neighbor Bruce, who had spotted Molly out in the field. He offered to come over with his tractor and carry Molly to the barn in his tractor bucket. I thought of my mom’s dream about Molly falling out of a bucket and thought that maybe this could be her dream materializing. In any case, David told him we’d let him know if we needed him and his tractor. I could tell David was willing to go with Bruce at this point but knew it was my place to call this shot.
This is the critical point in this Molly the Cow story and also in anyone’s story of being confronted with overwhelming circumstances. Should one go with the horses and the one dollar car hood or turn oneself over to Bruce and his Big Green Machine? It comes down to a question of depending on ones’ own personal strength or turning oneself over to technology and organized power. * I’ve found that if I keep turning myself over to organized power I remain the child who gets called back into the house if those who control the technology or organized power don’t approve of how I am playing. The issue is never Molly the Cow. The issue is always freeing the mind from inharmonious circumstances as well as other overbearing, manipulating minds. In order to engage personal power one must maintain a certain amount of detachment from the results. As in this case, my mom and David cared very much about moving Molly to the barn but were willing to recognize my right to do it in my own way even if in their minds the results might be jeopardized. In my opinion the miracle wasn’t Molly getting up but the way that four people could come together with such a high level of caring and yet such a low level of attachment to the results. Add energy to this situation and any materialization is possible. Now it’s time to bring in the horses.
We did drag Molly to the barn that day on the car hood, with the horses, and she did eventually get up. But not long after this incident, she stopped milking and died. This is how we all learned about unattachment to results.
Chapter 3 My Love Life
One night I dreamt that some kind of monster was attacking the farm and I tried to stop it but it was too strong for me and then David came and overcame the monster. But then as the monster ran away, he went after it and in the dream I had the feeling he wasn’t coming back. That killing this monster was his destiny. I woke up knowing that he was about to leave me.
Well the night before he left I woke up from a sound sleep because the house was filling up with smoke. Now I usually just sleep with a T-shirt and ran down to the wood stove in the basement without stopping to put more on. Our houses are connected in the basement and David had also smelled the smoke and came running down. It turned out to be just a stove pipe had come lose and it was soon fixed. But as we looked at each other I felt something I had never felt before. I felt for the first time that I wanted to give myself completely to a man. It didn’t happen of course but I guess I’m still waiting to feel like that again to the person I marry.
I was very attracted to Amish boys after David left and during haying season I work with a hay crew of 3 or 4 Amish boys. We’ve been doing this for years and to the Amish boys I’m just one of the guys. But I know and I’m sure their mothers know I’m not. And I must confess that I do get distracted by sweaty Amish boys. Nevertheless, so far my discipline has held and we all seem to work well together. What is interesting is that they don’t get distracted by me. There is a single minded focus of getting the job done which I am able to tune into when I overcome my distractions. Now none of us are getting paid by the hour for this work. The only reward is the chance to do it again tomorrow. And yet when we reach this level of consciousness whatever resistance we encounter gets overcome and there is a great amount of satisfaction gained by the experience.
On a metaphysical level living on this consciousness level puts you out of the reach of the greedy power freaks of the world. You make so many bales of hay, so much corn silage, ship so much milk and the people in control of the money can’t seem to lower your consciousness. They try but you are truly free of them
One day my mom had a little mother-daughter talk with me. Basically she said if I kept being interested in Amish boys, I would end up an old maid. I told her I wasn’t very good with English boys (any boy who isn’t Amish is English) but she insisted that I explore this area of romance.
I know I really shouldn’t give in to the pressure my girl friend, Mary, puts on me to go out with her and her boy friend on a double date but I figured this would be a way to show my mom that I listened to her advice. Mary said she thought I could use a little male attention. We were going to go out to eat at a restaurant and see what developed after. I never know what to wear because I’m hardly ever out of jeans and a T-shirt or Sweat-shirt. But tonight I find myself in a skirt and blouse, a bra (so my boobs will be pointy and attract attention) and pantyhose. It’s been a long time since I looked like this and it feels strange.
But I guess when you’re a girl you have to at least try to make yourself look pretty. Which is pretty hard for me. Mary, her almost engaged boy friend, and my date, pick me up in front of the house as I run to the car. Oh I forgot to mention I have on these weird shoes with heels that make it hard to walk and impossible to run. I do manage to get to the car, however, and just about topple in on top of my date in the back seat. As we untangle ourselves, I can feel his hand up my skirt as he extricates my body from his. Great start.
He tells me his name is Brad and that I look lovely as I try to pull my skirt down to where my panties don’t show. I tell him that it is nice to meet him, which is the biggest lie I’ve told in a long time. Mary looks over at us from the front seat and tells me that I clean up real nice. I give her a phony smile and tell her how beautiful she looks tonight. She giggles because she knows I’m just pulling her chain.
Then Brad attempts to engage me in small talk on the way to the restaurant. He wants to know the usual stuff. Have I ever been married? Do I have a steady boy friend now? Do I have any kids? I tell him no to all the above but don’t ask him anything because I just don’t care about the women in his life. I know I should be more friendly but I feel very vulnerable with a skirt on and feel like I need distance between us in order to feel comfortable. I guess feeling vulnerable is also part of the female trip.
We get to the restaurant and even have a few drinks and everyone is hoping that I will relax and go with the flow. After the meal, Mary’s boy friend invites us over to his place for a few more drinks. I knew this was coming because Mary and her friend are looking like they want to jump into each other pants. We arrive at Joe’s apartment (Joe is Mary’s boy friend) and before you can say, “let’s make out”, Mary and Joe have escaped to Joe’s bedroom, leaving me and Brad on the couch watching television.
I admit that I have been called frigid but I don’t let that bother me. I just don’t like to touch people who I really don’t know and I don’t like them to touch me either. I’ve already let perfect strangers paw and grab and grope me. Call me frigid or whatever, but it just doesn’t turn me on. I like to know and like the person who is going to take off my blouse and have his way with me. I also like to know that I can let the other person know how far I want to go and he would respect my wishes. Brad was your typical,”lets’ go all the way” kind of guy. But unfortunately for Brad, even though I had on a skirt, I was still stronger than he was from doing all the heavy work I do everyday on the farm. So I pushed him off of me onto the floor and told him I could probably rape him easier than he could rape me so maybe we’d better do something else. Of course he got pissed and started yelling at me until Mary and Joe came out of the bedroom in various stages of undress. They calmed Brad down and thought it best if they drove me home.
As I stepped out of the car in front of my house, I winked at Mary and said, “Well I guess that went well.”
I have a few more bad date stories but I’ll just inflict one more on you.
This is not a very exciting dream but I am writing about it for two reasons. First I remember it so vividly and second I hardly ever dress-up for going out. But this dream started out with me in a room trying on a blouse that was kinda frilly and just came down below my bra. Then I noticed there was a man in the room who I didn’t know so I left the room and went into my moms’ room. I was looking for a low cut pair of panties so I could wear my jeans low and have plenty of exposure between the blouse and jeans. Finally my mom came in and found a pair of panties that would work and that made me happy in the dream.
Well after having that dream I knew I was in for a difficult time. My body was trying to tell me something I already knew but was trying to ignore. But now I felt like a cat in heat and I knew I was going to materialize a certain kind of situation whether or not I wanted to.
There is this guy who comes to the farm selling cow medical supplies and he has been trying to put the make on me since forever. So last Friday he came and could tell immediately I was in a vulnerable state and he laid it on pretty thick. I, for my part, flirted with him in a coy sort of way. The long and short of it was that he asked me out to a party the following night and I accepted.
Now this animal medic guy who asked me out doesn’t come with the highest, moral standard rating, as my mom pointed out to me. She knows I’m pretty much an idiot when it comes to guys. In the heat of the moment I might just as well think,”Maybe it’s time for me to become a mother.” Understandably, she was a little worried but knew if I didn’t make some kind of move soon, I might end up an old maid.
So last night the animal medic guy (Bob) showed up at my door and off we went to a party at one of his friends house. When we walked in, there were about twenty people with loud music playing and lots of alcohol being drunk, Typical party. Bob immediately left me to talk to his friends and he figured I would go join the company of the few girls that were there. But instead I saw a guy with long hair and a beard, sitting on the floor smoking a joint. So I sat down next to him and he offered me a hit and I took it. We started laughing and enjoying each others’ company and then he asked why I was with Bob, who he considered a real ass hole. I told him sometimes you have to make a choice and all the options are bad.
Finally Bob found me again and told me we were going to his place. I said goodbye to my new friend and followed Bob out the door. At his apartment there was the usual kissing and grabbing and groping I’ve come to expect from men. But then in the heat of the moment, when it could have gone either way, I gave Bob a push and said, “I’m not that kind of girl.” That surprised the hell out of him and me too.
He was drunk and looked at me trying to figure out if I was just fooling around or if I really meant it. For my part I was ready to defend my new found virtue and fight for it if necessary. In the end, Bob figured I wasn’t worth the hassle and drove me home.
The last thing I said to him as I left the car was.”it was real and it was nice but it wasn’t real nice.”
Chapter 4 My Experiences off the Farm
I found it extremely difficult to deal with the world when I ventured off the farm. My step dad’s spiritual influence made it just about impossible to fit into the situations I found myself confronted with. And it didn’t help that I spent more time relating to animals than people for most of my life. So here is an example of my inability to fit in.
I got my notice to appear for jury duty one day. Now I have trouble with the idea of judging people even in the privacy of my own mind and find the idea of judging someone so they can be punished is beyond anything I wanted to involve myself with. But nevertheless I found myself in a court room listening to some person up front telling us the responsibilities of being a good juror. But when he came to the part which asked if anyone here had any reason to feel he or she would not make a good juror, I raised my hand. Well the person up front was not happy with me and asked me to join him for a little talk. I told him it was against my religion to do this juror number. So he made me follow him to the middle of the courtroom where the judge was talking to the defense attorney and the prosecuting attorney. My new friend reluctantly interrupted the judge and started to whisper to him while pointing at me. Finally the judge came over to me and asked me what the problem was. I told him I didn’t think I could handle the karma of this situation. He said, what do you mean karma? So I started to spell the word out for him but half way through the spelling his face started to turn red and I could tell he figured out what I was talking about because he was having a difficult time controlling his temper. He pointed at the chair I came from and told me I’d better get back there. He didn’t seem to want to hear anything else I had to say so I went back to my chair in the jury box. Then before the trial the prosecuting attorney was asked if he thought there was anyone on the jury who was unfit. Well he looked at me and then he looked at the judge and said he thought everyone was fine. I just shook my head and mumbled, “Oh brother.” But finally the defense attorney was asked the same question and he didn’t look at anybody, he just pointed to me and said. “you’re out of here.” I got up and mumbled under my breath, “I would like it if God didn’t always wait till the very last second to make his move.” I did not look at Mr Judge on my way out.
Usually when I take a break from the farm I leave for long periods of time. I went to college in Massachusetts and spent time working here and there in different parts of the country. The following is a short description of how I interacted with the world outside my farm existence.
I live in this big old house with some friends of mine. I say friends but mostly mean people who like my company and the rent I give them each month for the room I’m staying in. Also I help with the cleaning and cooking and caring for the young boy of the couple who own this place. There are other people who come stay here for awhile and at night we all get together like one big happy family and try to get high according to our preferences. This particular night a new guy showed up, his name is Cardy.
“Hi Cardy, I’m Sue,” I say as I’m introduced to this new dude.
He is kinda cute and never lets the joint go by without taking a good toke from it. Then as can be expected, he starts to rap.
“Well people, I’m heading out on a 1,500 mile trip within the next couple of weeks to live at a place called the University of the Wilderness. It seems the place is in need of people to live there for free if your willing to work on the place and buildings for your room and board.” Cardy explained. “I’m thinking of spending at least this summer there to see how I like the place. Everyone gets a small cabin on the top of this beautiful mountain near Cheyenne, Wyoming. The problem is that I would like someone to make the trip with me and am searching for volunteers.”
At the end of this speech, a hush fell over the room and it appeared that Cardy’s speech had fallen on deaf ears. It was then that my insanity asserted itself and I declared, “I’ll go with you.”
This happens to me alot, I say or do things and I’m just not sure why.
I think it has to do with me trying to live out my own karma. This is certainly a situation where I open myself up to whatever karma is out there waiting for me. Of course there’s always the male female thingy to deal with, but it seems to me that Cardy is looking more for intense experiences rather than a sexual object. That isn’t to say I’m opposed to a sexual experience, it’s just that sex leads one down the baby marriage road and that’s not the road I’m interested in following at this moment in time.
“Are you for real or just pulling my chain?” Cardy asks as he looks me over for a second time.
“I’m not sure of anything except I have to be somewhere and on top of a mountain in Wyoming is as good a place as any to be,” I responded.
He looked me over again and couldn’t believe is good luck. Mostly men judge women by how they look on the surface but with me it’s my mind you have to watch out for.
“OK if your serious we’ll leave two weeks from today. Don’t take too
much stuff because we’ll be going in a small car. Think you can handle traveling light?”
“I’ve traveled with no vehicle, a knapp sack of clothes and hardly any money. This should be a piece of cake if your more a plus than a minus,” I challenged.
“You seem to be just who I’m looking for. Be ready next Friday and it’s me and you down the road together, sweetie.”
“Don’t call me sweetie and your on,” I said as he gave me this shit eating grin.
So the time came for us to pack the trunk of this little blue car, with a rusted fender and a yellow hood and start our trip.
It’s kind of a small car so I was wondering if there would be room for my dog rascal, but as I got into the car I called him to me and he jumped in and sat on my lap. Cardy didn’t say anything, so off we went complete with rascal the dog.
It wasn’t very long before Cardy wanted to make a stop at a bar and grill he saw along the way. I got out of the car carrying my dog and followed Cardy into the bar and grill. I know this place and these people even if the names and faces are different. The consciousness level is always the same. Cardy seems to fit in to this kind of atmosphere but there is more to him than the average beer drinking male red neck. He seems surprised at himself for liking me as much as he does. He instinctively knows in order to seduce me he has to meet me on my awareness level which he’s finding out is a lot higher than your average chick out looking to get laid.
I find a table in the back and watch as Cardy starts to work the crowd. He has an act that doesn’t quit and entertains the guys as well as the girls in the place. He’s good at pin ball, kinda like the the pin ball wizard who is deaf dumb and blind. Total concentration with a little creative materialization happening as he manipulates the pin ball machine with his mind.
But here I sit alone with my dog. Alone happens for me and there is never any guarantee the person who left you alone is ever coming back, no matter how the circumstances appear to the contrary. So I walk over to the bar and ask the bar tender about the rooms for let sign over the bar.
He says there are indeed rooms available and I could have one and he would even over look the fact I was carrying a dog. So I got my things out of the car and went up to the room. Cardy was so busy with his act and drinking that he just didn’t notice I was gone.
In the room I started meditating. Often times I need to feel the concept of home and when it isn’t on the surface I find it inside myself. Then suddenly the door flew open and I got brought out of my trance like state. Cardy was at the door at little drunk and a little pissed off.
“Why did you leave like that?” he demanded
“I didn’t leave you, you were somewhere else. I was alone and acted as such. You don’t seem to handle alone as well as I do.”
He really does seem to want to be with me so I ask him to sit in front of me in a lotus position so he drops to the ground in a lazy crisscross. I tickle out a laugh, but proceed to squat near him. I kneel and touch his head. “Straight and dignified, maybe raise it a little to the air. Receive your thoughts, don’t look down on them unless you need to hide them. Relax your shoulders, no need to prepare them for battle. Unlock your posture, no…not sloppy, just up and straight….with ease. Feel it?” My hand is now on his chest.
“Feel what, my heart beating?” he smirks
“No, the inner you. It beats inside of you like a soft whisper…you feel it’s vibration sometimes. Do you feel it?” He nods his head and appears to be trying to listen more seriously to what I’m saying.
As Cardy becomes more relaxed in my presence and is starting to trust me as much as he’s able to trust anyone, my mind opens up to him and he starts to fall into it. His body twitches as his mind leaves it behind and his essence flues through the window of my soul and we meet in an inner realm of my creation. We are both naked as I take his hand in mine and pull him down on top of me. At first he starts to use me to gain some illusionary end which doesn’t exist on this plane. Then he becomes more aware as he realizes there is nothing to win or lose here.
“Be Here Now,” I whisper in his ear.
“I’ve never been this high in my entire life,” he whispers back as we merge and our consciousness expands to the point where we touch the mind of God. Nobody stays this high for long and suddenly there is an explosion of
white light which propels our souls back into our bodies.
“What the fuck happen?” Cardy screams as he gets to his feet and looks at me like I’m some kind of witch.
“I was just playing with your mind a little bit dear, you seemed to be enjoying yourself the last time I looked.”
“What you did was really fuckin weird, nobody does it like that.”
“Well I feel bad for everyone else cuz fucking with your mind is soooo much better than slopping around with your bodies.’ I purred back at him.
“I’m going back down stairs where normal people use their bodies to slop around with each other. If I were smart I’d leave you right here and go on alone, it would be safer. “Lucky for you I never go the safe route.” With that he slammed the door and was gone for the night only I hope.
I could go on with this story but there are bigger fish to fry before I’m through here.
One of the times I left the farm was to go to Massachusetts to be with my bio father, Fred. As I stated earlier, he had been taking me off the farm whenever he wanted for most of my life with disastrous results for both me and the farm. Finally I got to the point where I felt strong enough, mentally and spiritually to deal with this problem. So this time my aim was to help him out with his mental problems and do some work at the recording studio where he is still working.
But of course things went bad between us and we got into one argument after another until I left the recording studio, found an apartment and started doing some part time work at McDonalds to make ends meet. Now I’m a very spiritual person and spend a lot of time meditating. Even at the best of times I don’t have a lot of attachment to the material world or what most people call the real world. Then one day I found I couldn’t break my” trance like” meditative state and was unable to come to the surface of my material world. This condition has happened to me before but with the help of my step dad I was able to break out of it. This time however, he wasn’t around to help. I did eventually start to hear his voice in my head, like I did the last time this happened. He told me I was basically accepting the karma for my past lives unlike most people who pass their bad karma down to their children, which was exactly what my father was doing to me. So in effect, I was a willing victim.
In the real world, my father had tried to visit with me and found me in a lotus position from which I was unable to relate to him and he to me. He decided I needed psychiatric help and got a lawyer who got a judge to sign a paper allowing my father to come and take me to the funny farm with the help of two policemen. By this time I had been in this position for so long that I couldn’t stand up and had to literally be dragged away to a mental health facility.
I spent a couple of weeks there before they let me go into the loving care of my bio-father. I was diagnosed catatonic-schizophrenic and given drugs to keep me out the the rabbit hole they found me in. This is a scary word for most people. It means a break with reality. But basically I’ve found, it’s a label put on people who break from their intellect or ego. I find it interesting that everyone believes in schizophrenia but very few really believe in enlightenment. Both are a break from the reality of the intellect and ego but with enlightenment one finds peace and joy from the break while in schizophrenia, one finds confusion and resentment.
So what about the people who don’t break from their intellect and ego. Well here’s where we have a problem too. These people always end up as either masters or slaves and for the aware person, one is the same as the other. Both groups are never happy. So the master tries to exploit the slave to become happier while the slave tries to get out of the slave slot and become a master. There are some cases in which the intellect and ego try so very hard to manipulate the people around them that a break occurs in the personality and an intense period of suffering begins. This condition is usually labeled schizophrenia but can also be looked at as a time of pay back for the karmic debt accrued by the person who was motivated by her intellect and ego.
Now the person who is labeled is totally cut off from relating to the world as she has in the past. The only cure for this condition is love. So you need to make someone ease’s happiness and well being more important than your own and then the pain will start to be replaced by peace and joy as you learn to love without attachment.
The telephone rings. I pick it up to discover my step-dad is on the other end.
“Hi sweetheart,” I heard his darling voice say over the phone.
“Hi Dad,” I replied. “I’m amazed you got me. I feel like I’m in solitary confinement here—no calls and no visitors.”
“Well, your father is making a big deal of this situation. He’s told your mother that in order to relate to you she has to leave me and come live in Massachusetts.”
“What a shit head he can be.”
“Nevertheless,” my dad continued, “you have to get yourself out of there to stop your mother’s pain and shift it onto the people who are responsible. I would come and get you myself, but that would give the impression that I’m snatching you away and this stupid game will start all over again. Best if you walk out the door, stick out your thumb and trust in God.”
“I’m ready for the exit out of here by any means,” I exclaimed.
“That’s good, because there will probably be a lot of resistance to overcome.”
“OK Dad, I’m out of here.” I said with as much conviction as I could muster.
I left my biological father in Massachusetts and with a backpack full of all my belongings started walking down the road. I really didn’t feel I could go back to the farm in Pennsylvania with everyone thinking I was crazy. My step dad knew where I was coming from but you can never just go and physically be with him. In order to reach him, you have to expand your consciousness to his level. And that was exactly what I planned to do or die trying. I had stopped taking the drugs they gave me at the hospital because they would never take me where I needed to go.
So I started hitch-hiking to up state New York which is about 300 miles from where I was standing at the moment. I had heard there were lots of apple orchards there and I felt it wouldn’t be hard to get a job picking fruit. After all I was carrying around this official crazy label now so chances are I wasn’t going to make it big in the corporate world. Besides I had done some fruit picking and really liked the purity of the job. You just get paid for the amount of fruit you picked, no fancy resume required.
I got a ride right away. But by this time it was getting late and the driver asked if I had a place to stay for the night. I told him I had a tent which I could pitch just about anywhere. But he insisted I come home with him and eat something and then he would take me to a beautiful beach where I could pitch my tent. Of course I was scared, but figured my life was in the hands of God at this point so I agreed. True to his word I found myself in his house, just me and him, eating a meal. I wasn’t really afraid of him or what he might do to me. I’m really good at picking up where people are at and he was just a normal guy. But to my surprise, I found myself very upset because I was lost. I didn’t know how to get back to the main highway and it was freaking me out. I really couldn’t tell if this guy was going to bring me back to the highway again. But he did bring me to the beach as promised, and it was a beautiful site to pitch my tent. I finally got rid of my fear of being lost by realizing my destination of picking fruit was pretty flimsy at best, so I decided I would rethink my destination in the morning if he didn’t show up and bring me to where I could continue my trip.
He did show up the next morning and took me to the entrance of the toll road I needed to take in order to get to the orchards I was traveling to. Unfortunately, they didn’t allow hitch-hikers on the toll road so I had to try to hitch a ride in front of the toll booth where people had to pay to enter this highway. I was standing in back of a sign where someone had spray painted the words,” No rides out of hell hole.” At first I thought it was amusing but after about 5 hours of thumbing, with night time setting in, I understood exactly what the author of this message was telling me. I found some bushes near by and pitched my tent and hoped for better luck in the morning.
But the next day was the same. No ride after another 5 or 6 hours. Finally I snapped and started hitch-hiking in the opposite direction with absolutely no idea as to where I was going. Now I figured this is insanity taking me over again and driving me over the edge into the abyss. Then a truck stopped and I got in and the driver asked me where I was going. That was the most difficult question anyone has ever asked me up to this point. He could see I was having trouble answering him so he told me he was going on the toll road but in the opposite direction that I was trying to go in. So I asked him if he could just get me past the toll booths so I could start hitching from the highway itself. He said sure and after paying his toll, he dropped me off on the road and I crossed over to the other side to continue my journey to find God. If a police car happened by, I would be picked up and made to pay a fine, but instead a car stopped and picked me up and brought me all the way to where I wanted to be,
It was at this point that I realized that when my will, ego, and intellect failed me, I didn’t descend into insanity. Something else stepped in and put me on the path I wanted to follow. I realized I had truly touched the mind of the God I was looking to find.
So I arrived in Alton, New York on the banks of Lake Ontario not really knowing where to go to find apple orchards. Then I came to the Alton unemployment office and went in to see if they could help. Well the guy I saw just wanted me to fill out a bunch of forms but wouldn’t tell me where they were hiring pickers at any of the orchards in the area. Then as I was leaving, he finally relented and told me there were lots of orchards around the shore of the lake. So I hitched up to the lake where there was a beautiful beach and started my quest to find gainful employment.
All day I went walking and hitch-hiking around to the various orchards in the area but they all were hiring Jamaican pickers and would only hire me if they ran short of pickers. Each night I would return to the beach on the lake and lick my wounds. I knew time was running out for me. I had to plug into the system very soon. On the surface of things it looked like I had no hope, but inside myself I felt strongly I was in the right place at the right time. This is the point where I had to materialize in order to stop the world from doing its’ ‘crazy chick’ number on me again.
So the next morning I got a ride but the driver wasn’t going as far as I wanted to go so he left me off at a turn in the road. I started thumbing again but noticed I was standing in front of another apple orchard so I left the road and went over to find the owner. As it so happened, a few of his Jamaican pickers didn’t show up and so he hired me on the spot. He said I could camp out in his woods and showed me where I could start picking. This circumstance was proof to me, beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was materializing my world from the inside out. I spent some lovely days picking apples and camping out. I would get up in the morning and make breakfast from a cook stove I carried with me and go to the orchard and start picking apples. At the end of the day the owner of the trees would count the bins of apples I picked and I would get paid by the bin. Now this is really hard work lugging a ladder around and climbing the apple trees with a bucket around your shoulders. But I seemed to need to hurt as much on the outside as I did on the inside to be able to stand the emotional pain I was experiencing at the time. Once in awhile the owner would show up and yell at me if he thought I wasn’t picking fast enough because by this time I had a strong tendency to fall back into myself instead of bringing my energy to the surface. And so I forced myself to come to the surface and found I had the energy I needed to pick apples as fast as I needed to. I was doing so good that I asked the owner if I could move into one of his cabins that he had for the pickers and he said he had a single cabin I could have for the season.
So I moved into my new cabin surrounded by Jamaicans. There was a stove and refrigerator, heat and even a shed out back where I could take a hot shower. I was very aware of the fact that my mind was putting my world back together again to satisfy my needs in the way I had become accustom to. At this point I took nothing for granted.
The Jamaicans came to visit me and some were idiots but some were very consciously aware. All were in excellent physical condition. For the most part they liked me and thought I was a colorful addition to their camp situation. One day I went over to another cabin to find out something from the guy who lived there. And to my surprise, a Jamaican woman answered the door and invited me in. I wasn’t sure of the relationship she had with the guy living there but asked her to tell him I wanted to see him and started to leave. She told me there was no need to go and wanted me to stay for coffee. So I did and started to settle in for some girl talk. But the vibration was all wrong. For one thing she only had on a T-shirt and panties which I thought was a little odd for her to wear when entertaining someone she only met for the first time. And for another thing the small talk I was trying to start never really got off the ground. Instead I felt this attraction for her that I’ve only experience a few times with guys. And then it hit me. She was in the camp to make money off of the Jamaican guys through her sexual appeal, which at the moment, I found, very strong even though I didn’t realize I could go both ways before this moment.
But I had fought too hard and long for the energy I was using to survive and wasn’t about to give it away to this chick for a little pleasure. I heard later that a few of the guys were giving away their whole pay checks to her for her favors. I felt sorry for them and felt a little guilty about being part of the female gender.
Nevertheless, I settled into my new environment of picking apples in the day and living with the Jamaicans at night. Then one rainy day when we weren’t picking fruit, I went hitching into town and saw a motorcycle for sale on somebody’s lawn. Now I never drove a motorcycle before but figured, “How hard can it be?” So I went up to the house, contacted the people who were selling it and bought the dam thing for 800$. I taught myself to drive it and found I could tie my backpack to a sissy bar on the back of the seat so I could do some long distance driving when the apple season ended.
It was November when I finally picked my last apple, packed up my few possessions, and headed down the road on my motorcycle. All the Jamaicans were heading down to Florida to pick oranges so I thought that was as good an idea as any. I had on every bit of clothing I owned as I traveled out of New York Sate into Pennsylvania because it was so cold and dizzily. Just as I was crossing the state line, a police officer who was directing traffic motioned for me to pull off to the side of the road. Then he came over to me and told me to wait in the cruiser.
So as I was sitting there I couldn’t help but enjoy the fact that I was warm and dry for the first time that day since I had spent the day riding in the cold and the rain. I knew I should be thinking about all the bad things that could happen to me but I just couldn’t get past the fact of feeling good about being out of the weather, so when he returned to the cruiser I was in a pretty good mood, considering. Then he started asking me questions to find out who he was dealing with. Unfortunately for him, who I am is mostly God in a box called sue and I knew it wouldn’t be long before he was looking into the smiling face of God.
He asked me where I lived and I pointed to the back pack tied to the back of my motorcycle. Then he asked where I came from and I told him I was picking apples in upper state New York until the season ended. Then he wanted to know where I was going and I told him I was going to Florida to pick oranges. He wanted to know who I knew in Florida and I said nobody. So he got all upset and said he could take me to jail for vagrancy and I said that’s cool, Florida can wait.
Then the whole victim, victimizing mind set stopped and he calmed down and said in kind of a defeated voice that he was going to give me a ticket but when I got to Florida I should pay it to avoid a lot of trouble. So I said sure and he let me go.
As I climbed on my bike I smiled as I remembered what my girl friend said to me when I told her I was going to hitch hike across the state. She asked if I wasn’t afraid of getting taken advantage of. And I replied,” you can’t take advantage of somebody with nothing to lose.”
I took my time getting to Florida. I only put in between 5 and 8 hours of driving a day because I came to realize as I was speeding down the inter-state highway that if something went wrong, I was dead meat. Riding on two wheels at 60mph is very different than driving on four wheels. But when I got tired of riding I would pull off the main road and take some dirt side road until I’d come to a spot where I could pitch my tent for the night. Most nights were cold by then but my cook stove would give my tent light and heat. I drove over a week like this before one day I pulled into a gas station and the attendant came out wearing only a short sleeved shirt. That’s when I realized I had escaped the upcoming winter.
I asked the attendant where they were picking oranges and he directed me to an area called, Indian River. So I headed on out to that area and found a packing house for oranges where they hired pickers. I showed the man in the office my pay stubs for picking apples and he told me to show up the next morning and get on the orange bus when it pulled in.
There was an orange bus in front of the packing house in the morning that anyone could get on who wanted to pick oranges. I was the only white person on the bus but for once I wasn’t the only female. The driver was this big black lady named Sally Mae and one of the pickers was a girl also. Sally offered me an orange bag to pick with but said I would have to buy it if I stayed on. We went to the orange grove where a tractor trailer truck came by with a load of bins, which were distributed to all 12 pickers. Then everyone would pick as fast as they could until all the empty bins were full. I had picked 4 bins before they ran out and had to go back to the bus. All the rest of the pickers had picked 6 to 8 bins except the other Jamaican girl who also picked 4 bins. Since you only get paid by the bin, anything less than 4 bins wouldn’t make you enough money to survive. But for me survival was my goal and I was really happy with myself. And Sally Mae was very happy with me too.
After she found out how well I picked fruit, Sally Mae took me under her wing and became my surrogate mother. She got me a place to stay and yelled at anyone who gave me a hard time. I remember her saying to everyone on the bus that I was one of them even if I was white. I really loved her. Sometimes we would stop at a place to pick up a picker and the picker wouldn’t come out of his house because he was too hung over and Sally would send a couple of guys from the bus in to drag him out of the house. I was amazed at how well I fit in with this group of people. Every morning they would show up at my door to pick me up and we would all drive to a new grove to pick for the day and then I would be brought back to the house in an orange grove that Sally had arranged for me to live in. Once in a while another white guy would get on the bus and sit down next to me. He would ask me what it was like and I would reply, “It’s hell!” No white new person lasted more than a day on that bus that winter. It was a wonderful winter for me however, even if picking oranges was even harder than picking apples.
But come May, I got a letter from my mom asking me to come back home to the farm to help out and I felt this was a sign that it was time to go back. Leaving Sally was hard and we hugged and cried a lot and promised to do it again but it just wasn’t meant to be.
Chapter 5 Be Here Now
I’m back on the farm writing about my progress, if any, after these intense experiences. On the surface not much has changed. My mom is terrified that I might do that again someday but my step dad has led me to believe, in so many ways, that he is proud of me. The walls still come for me once in awhile but now I am aware that God lives on both sides of the wall. I don’t have the need to break through or climb over anything in front of me to get to the other side. So in effect walls don’t exist in my consciousness. I still spend most of my time with animals and I still shy away from people. Although I have started relating to people in the virtual world. I guess writing this story is just another way of relating to people in that way, But usually I use a pretty avatar and take advantage of sexual energy to go deep into the minds of the people I meet on line. This is one of my first attempts to relate deeply on line using intellectual energy. So far I am pleased with the results. Unlike sexual energy, intellectual energy doesn’t get pushy and become an end in itself like sexual energy. For me the end is always love without attachment. This is probably why I haven’t gone down the wife-mother road yet. Being a mother or wife screams to me of attachment and I know from experience that attachment is another word for pain.
My idea of spirituality seems different from how the people I know use this term. Most people who are into spirituality have a set of beliefs that they try to live up to and judge themselves and others according to how how well they follow the rules of their beliefs. Well my spirituality is more an awareness of how everything and everyone in my life is a manifestation of my own mind. Therefore, if I see something in my life that I don’t like, I try to figure out how and when I gave my consent to this unpleasant circumstance that is causing me pain.
As I dive deeper inside myself to find the cause of my pain, I start to let go of the material things on the surface of my life and start to see the physical world from a different perspective. Going deep inside yourself is a painful experience and the major problem is bringing your awareness back to the surface again in order to materialize love instead of pain. Because if or when you return to the surface, you bring with you the power or energy to heal your physical world.
For the most part I find when I do come to the surface again, my material world is in shambles and my relationships have all broken down. But now I am aware enough to realize that the love I made without attachment is the only reality that can withstand this metaphysical dive. And so I build my world out of love and not fear.
I have written a few blogs about my experiences since my return to the farm. Maybe they will shed more light on what I have been saying here or maybe they will only be entertaining. The point is that loving energy and effort has been put into each of these blogs and if I wrote this story well enough, you should be able to tap into this energy and enjoy reading them.
My Pig Story
This is an experience I’ve had with pigs. Awhile back our neighbors boar got out of his pen and was roaming the neighborhood terrorizing anyone or anything that got in his way. The people who owned him were away for the day so my step dad told me to take the dogs and see if I could do something about this unruly situation. So I found mister pig and had the dogs chase him over to his pen but he wouldn’t go in, I guess he was having too much fun exercising his male ego (like many other human males I know) Anyways I finally had to tell the dogs to make mister pig an offer he couldn’t refuse. So my two dogs attacked and to my surprise, mister pig put up one heck of a fight. I couldn’t believe I was standing there watching this life and death struggle before my very eyes. Finally I went over to the place where mister pig got out of his fence, lifted up the wire mesh and got mister pig’s attention by suggesting that maybe going back in his pen might not be such a bad idea at this point. Well even male pigs, like male humans, can be stubborn, ornery, and cantankerous, but they do recognize a good idea when they are hard pressed and presented with one. So mister pig gave up the fight (which he was losing anyway) and crawled back under the fence into his pen. And we all lived happily ever after.
Looking into the mind of a Duck
We have a small pond on our property and during this last summer I noticed that there is a lone duck living there. Every time I go by the pond I notice that he is still there swimming around and often times he would paddle over to where I am standing and look at me as if I were the answer to a problem he was having.
So the next time I passed by the pond I brought some bread along and threw it to him as he was swimming around in front of me. He got very excited and would go after each piece of bread I threw and gobble each piece up until all the bread I brought was gone. Then the next day I couldn’t help thinking about him and felt compelled to go back with more bread. So this has become a part of my day, only now he jumps up on the bank when he sees me and eats the bread right out of my hand.
I look forward to visiting my little duck friend as much as he enjoys seeing me. But I sense that this contact is different from all the other contacts I have in my world. For one thing, all my contacts involve images. For example, I am in contact with people who project the image of a doctor or auto repairman or neighbor or even mother or friend. Then there is the possessive aspect to my contacts, like my mother or my friends and my cow or my horse and of course your mother or your horse or your dog. So I try to fit my duck friend into some possessive image but I can’t really call him my duck just because he is swimming in my pond.
An animal belongs to the person who has raised it. But nobody supplied the heat to hatch the egg he came from. And nobody supplied the feed and shelter that kept him alive this long, so I came to the conclusion that this duck belonged to God. Then I thought of winter coming and wondered how he was going to survive the winter. I know what it takes to bring an animal through the winter and it seemed to me that God was not taking very good care of His duck if He expected me to help Him keep it alive this winter.
But then I thought of my life and what was keeping me alive through the winter. There was all the feed we made for the cows and a wonderful warm barn for them to take shelter in and the milk they would make and the money we would get for the milk. We could go to Walmart and buy all the things we needed which were produced by the people in China and I thought of our soldiers fighting on the other side of the world when suddenly I looked a little deeper and saw that everything was there and alive because God was there keeping my world alive in exactly the same way He was keeping this duck alive. And He loved the world of the duck as much as He loved me and my world.
And the mantra reverberated through my mind,”BE STILL, AND KNOW, I AM GOD.’ I then left the world of images and possessions and entered the natural world of the duck in front of me and could feel Gods’ love giving us life.
Every time I would go to see the duck he would get very upset when I left him. He wanted to follow but didn’t want to leave the safety of the pond. So I figured he was lonely and called up a friend who I knew could get his hands on a female, mallard, duck. So I went over to his place and got the cage with the female duck inside. I brought the cage over to the pond where my duck was swimming around and let her go. She immediately swam over to him and at first he was a little afraid but eventually he got used to her and they became a unit. And for the next month he was one happy duck and she was very pleased with him and her new situation.
Then about a week ago, the temperature dropped to around 20 degrees and when I went to feed the ducks, the female was missing. There was a thin layer of ice on the pond so I thought maybe she was stuck somewhere. So I walked around the pond and I saw the trail of some animal on the ice which led to a hole in the ice. I figured something like a weasel had crawled out on to this very thin ice, jumped onto the female duck, and they both broke through the ice and drown. If the weasel had lived, he would have gotten the male duck too, but fortunately my duck went over to where I had been feeding him and waited for me to come back.
When I came back he jumped up on the bank and tried to tell me about the tragedy. He was covered with ice and shivering, so I picked him up, gave him a hug and brought him back with me to the barn. I couldn’t help thinking about Darwin’s survival of the fittest idea. Out of the three animals involved, only the duck who I had put my love and attention to survived. Maybe the element of love was the deciding factor here.
Anyway back to the story. The duck fit in well in the barn. He would follow me around when I did my chores and we would discuss his problems and options. He of course wanted to leave the barn but I didn’t think that was a wise decision. So we compromised and I took him for a little walk outside. And then to my amazement he took a running start, leaped into the air and flew off.
I figured if he could fly off he could fly back if he wanted. But nevertheless I went to the brook in back of our house and found him there swimming around. He said he didn’t like the barn and wanted to stay in the brook. By this time I wasn’t sure if he really knew what was best for him but I certainly wasn’t going to wade out into the brook after him. So I left some feed and hoped for the best.
Well the best didn’t happen. The weather turned cold and we started to get lots of snow. I went everyday to visit him and give him the option of coming back but he didn’t want any part of my idea. Then today after more snow and a wind chill of around zero, I went to see how he was doing. Well most of the brook had frozen over except for the part that was running. My duck was in the current of the brook trying to keep himself from being dragged down stream. Things were getting serious here and I told him so. He had to shit or get off the pot real soon. But he wouldn’t come to the bank where I could get him so I had to say goodbye and started for the house. It was then that I heard a flapping sound and saw my duck fly out of the brook and land in about a foot of snow. He looked so funny with just his head sticking out of the snow. I ran over and picked him up and found there was a tear in my eye. That was such a leap of faith for him to trust that I would be there for him when he made himself completely helpless. Truly, the love of God materialized.
After that he stayed with me around the barn until the weather got warmer and he again flew back to the brook. I got in the habit of calling to him from the barn as it got dark, and he would fly back to me to eat and rest. Then one day he didn’t show after I called so I went down to find him but he was nowhere around and I never saw him again since.
Okay now, loving animals without attachment is basically pure and simple. But when you try to engage people in this “love without attachment” thingy, it gets incredibly complicated. Let’s use this story I’m writing for an example. For the most part we are all looking for attention. Lots of attention because it is an incredible rush when your work becomes popular. This is attachment on the writers part. However the reader who is enjoying your work, sometimes at a deep level, is practicing love without attachment and is sending you lots of emotional energy. You take this energy and materialize in the physical world, money. The energy never makes it back to the reader and so the whole interaction turns into a business deal. I’m not putting business down, I think when it’s conducted right it is a very beautiful thing. It’s just not what I’m talking about here.
So I have learned to practice love without attachment in the virtual world with people. Using this story as an example again, I too want lots of attention for my work and when I get it I get high emotionally and when I don’t I feel down. If you are honest with yourself you would have to admit that most of the time this kind of thinking leads to feeling down. I also find that when I write for the love of writing, only, I get an emotional lift that doesn’t depend on the emotional support from my readers. Now sometimes, not very often, a reader comes along who enjoys my work at a deep level and I make sure in every way possible to return the energy in kind. This is loving without attachment.
Like I said earlier, usually I don’t use the intellectual activity of writing to practice loving without attachment on my computer. I use sexual energy. I guess it has aspects in common with prostitution, but prostitution involves physical sex and money which are both attachments. And the client puts out lots of emotional energy which never comes back in kind. Again this is not what I’m talking about here. I start the ball rolling by being the one who puts out the emotional sexual energy and try to deal with the reactions in an enlightened way. You don’t need a crystal ball to figure out what usually happens when a girl comes on sexually to a guy. In the virtual world it’s a little different however. For on thing, you never get physically raped, which is a real plus, lol. And if or when the whole encounter gets out of hand, escape is only a button push away. I’ve written blogs about my encounters so it might help to give an example of what I’m talking about.
Through my awareness I can make my virtual world real and this is why guys are attracted to me. I can make them feel good or bad in an intense way which stops their feelings of loneliness even if it is for a short period. But when all is said and done, I need a loving virtual relationship because I know if I relate without love to these guys who can’t or won’t love, they will hurt me if I try to get involved with them on the deep level I seem to need and crave.
It’s been about two months now that I’ve been seeing this guy in my virtual world. I’ve come to realize this is a long time for a virtual relationship to last. But I do put effort into making the right moves in a relationship because I believe if you screw up it’s a long time before another one comes around. So lately it’s been more work than play for me to keep this relationship going. I have trained myself in my material world to make things happen through work and figured it’s the same in the virtual world. Well this guy I’ve been seeing has been having a problem with a kind of depression which I try to keep him from falling into. And for the last few days it’s been more and more difficult for me because his final exams were coming up and the stress tends to send him into a tail spin. This is what happened in his last exam session when he failed an exam and had to take it again. But this time I was with him right up until he left for class and he did hold it together enough to pass both his exams. The amazing part of all this is that he was aware enough of my effort to thank me for being there for him.
And so I learned that through discipline of my mind and body I can enjoy the more sublime pleasures of life like walking with my dogs in the woods, or riding my horse, or just being alone. And now I’ve experienced the sublime pleasure of being there for a member of the opposite sex and making his life a little more satisfying.
On the other hand, I’ve just met a guy who knows how to push all my buttons and gets me to a point where most of my discipline flies out the window when we are together. The world always seems to be there to make you an offer you can’t refuse.
I find that having deep relationships is like climbing a mountain. The higher or deeper you go, the harder you fall if you make a misstep. At this point in my life, I don’t make relationship mistakes or missteps. Because as the relationship gets deeper and you are climbing higher on the mountain, you become aware of the need to start getting rid of the extra heavy baggage of your intellect and ego. And so far I haven’t met anyone capable of doing this. So I watch my ex-lover go screaming off the side of the cliff because of some stupid move he made. And because I was not the one to kill the relationship, I am aware of the fact that my mind will materialize another even more enlightened relationship than the last one, when I stay un-attached. Let’s get back to a few more virtual relationship experiences.
I’ve been having deep relationships in my virtual world and find my material world is effected by these relationships, for better or worse. So I don’t see my virtual world as just fun and games anymore. I find even when I’m in the virtual world, God is there keeping score of my karma. But I don’t mind, I’ve learned already that I can’t hide from God and mostly I’m pleased to see Her smiling face when things get rough.
Sometimes I meet guys in the virtual world who I immediately make contact with and we fall into a deep relationship very fast. This happened when I met Tony. We hit it off right away and we both knew it was something special. But just as quickly as the relationship started, it stopped abruptly. He just stopped showing up in my virtual world. I was hurt naturally but over time started to recover.
Then we met by chance again and the magic was still there. It was very nice being with him again but this time I held myself back because I didn’t want to be hurt again. Then his step sister started messaging me saying that Tony wanted us to get back together again as boy friend and girl friend. She said he got involved with another girl who hurt him badly and she was sorry for telling him she didn’t think I was good for him and that’s why he stopped seeing me. Well I didn’t want to be involved with a guy who couldn’t or wouldn’t follow his heart in matters like this and told her so. But Tony and I kept seeing each other and my feelings for him became stronger.
But mostly when we met there were always friends of his step sister around, who at this point approved of our relationship. I enjoyed being with Tony and his sisters’ friends but noticed that they kept feeding his male ego. Now I’ve been treated badly by male egos and knew it would come down to him putting me first in his life or his male ego. Well naturally he put his male ego first and I left the cage that formed around us by his unawareness.
We still meet by chance once in awhile and the magic is still there, but I am aware that he will never take my hand and together leave the prison created by his ego.
I bought my playstation 3 about two years ago now. At that time I never played a game in my life and didn’t know the first thing about gaming. Mostly I was into trying to make some kind of contact with people. You see I work on my parents dairy farm and relate more to animals than people, so I thought maybe a playstation could change that. Well I did start relating to more people right away, unfortunately, most of the people I related to were horny, little boys. That didn’t quite do it for me. But then I met someone more my own age and we became boyfriend and girlfriend. This relationship made me very happy but I found out fast that it was very difficult to sustain a deep virtual relationship. The virtual world, like the physical world, would go out of it’s way to break us apart and finally we were separated.
It’s at this point that I tried playing video games. At first it was extremely difficult for me to figure out how to play because the games were incredibly hard and required a lot of work on my part just to buy a game and learn how it’s supposed to be played. Since I make my living milking cows, I was good at figuring out solutions to problems in the material world and eventually this ability carried over into the gaming world. So I put in a lot of work into developing my gaming skills over the next year.
And so it was at this point that I got back in touch with the boyfriend I got separated from at the beginning of my playstation experience. We both knew that we stilled cared for each other but the hurt of separation was so bad that neither one of us had the courage to try it again until now. I had found a game where two players, a guy and a girl, could play on line in a co-operative situation and I was finally at the point where I could play the game well enough to be a plus to whomever I played with. And so we played this game together (he being an expert player) and all the work I put into learning how to game paid off in a wonderful gaming experience.
For the most part I try not to have exclusive virtual relationships. But the guy I am involved with now really needs me to be faithful to him and I can see the benefits of having a virtual bf. So I started telling my other guy friends that I only want to relate platonic-ally.
Well this idea didn’t go over very well. One guy said how we could still have a virtual sexual relationship without my bf knowing about it. But I told him I would know and it would ruin what I have with my bf. I also told him that having virtual sex with someone who loves you is a much better experience. He explained how he was falling in love with me but didn’t get there yet. But I told him he would never fall in love with anyone because he doesn’t know how to love. He asked how do I know that and I said that maybe I was new to him but he’s not new to me.
I guess it’s time to bring this story to a close. It was great fun for me and I hope the few people who followed me this far enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I feel I have progressed in my attempt to reach other minds through this venue and hopefully have added something to the people I have touched. Anyway I’d like to end with a poem of sorts, that I wrote.
Seed of God
At some point in my life I became aware of the seed of God deep in my being. I nurtured this seed with thoughts and actions of love and peace and truth and freedom. I protected this seed from the attacks of the world and never betrayed the integrity of it’s being.
As the years went by I discovered that most of the people around me had either sold their seed to the highest bidder or had fed it thoughts and actions motivated by fear until it withered and died.
The world did its’ best to make me believe in it’s illusions but I never lost sight of the truth. Finally after finding out that I could not be bought or scared into submission, the world decided to erase me. But by this time the seed of God had become my main reason for being and I fought a long hard battle to protect it. Alas I was overwhelmed by superior odds and was trampled to death.
But lo and behold I found out there is no death. And when I looked inside my being to the place where the seed of God was planted, in its stead was a magnificent, radiant tree. The minions of the world attacked the tree with their machines and weapons only to find out their weapons were useless and their machines broke down. So at the end of the siege the little egos of the world took their broken toys and left.
It was then I realized I was not the trampled ego lying in the dirt but the magnificent, radiant tree with roots sunk deep in Mother Earth for sustenance. I no longer needed the world but now the world needed me.

 

Wow you keep blowing me away with your insight. I thank you for reading this and sharing your insight with me. It makes the effort more worthwhile.

 

First thought i have to share at this point is: please don't quote the OP in its entirely. There's no good reason for it and it keeps people scrolling..!