I see differently now, things are changing. I am changing, I have changed. Into what I am not yet sure, but my perception is different than it was in the past.
In the past there were moments when I had wept and the grief was too big to bear. It passed through my consciousness like a giant Elephant, my grief that is.
Since then I have been afraid to cry, although I cried for years straight. When I began meditating I could not sit still for a moment without bursting into tears.
They just flowed out of me, through me… Sometimes painful, sometimes rejuvenating and cleansing, sometimes terrifying. Terrifying because… Hmmm…
It was as if in those moments of grief that I became so self aware, so open to myself that my psyche could see too much of myself. Too much for a single moment… Lifetimes too much.
I’m certain I told you about the time I fell to my knees sobbing in LAX. My parents said I never cried when I was a kid, I imagine that it all got stuck somewhere inside me and that’s why it all began pouring out once I sat still.
I remember my birth, not like a movie that I saw but even stranger. Like a distant sensation in my face. Not my fleshy face that appears in the mirror but my face that has always been.
I change my look often. People I know comment about it, they say things like “You look like a different person.” That’s usually after I have shaved or cut my hair. Isn’t that odd?
I would imagine that if they knew me at all they might sense when I had truly changed, like on the inside. Much more so than when I just clipped my nails.
Once while working with the Scotsman in the canyon, I fell to my knees and wept. He said I was blessed, I think I was just in love… or in pain. I can’t quite remember the difference just yet, I just know that it was beautiful to be alive and dead in the same moment.
Today I had a moment when I thought back on how long it has been since I was exhausted depressed, and it was long enough that I couldn’t remember the exact month.
I have toiled over that topic for decades, searching for the missing piece of the puzzle. It it really as complex as psychotherapy might suggest? As simple as religion sells?
I monitor my food intake, everything down to the very last canned ingredients and the only thing I have changed substantially since my last deep depression is that I have stopped eating gluten.
Years ago when I first began to fall apart my parents made a special effort to try and help figure out what was going on with me. My father told me about a show he watched where a kid went totally nuts and they found out he was allergic to wheat.
That frightened me that I could be so vulnerable in this realm as to fall victim to something so seemingly harmless as a grain of wheat. I do recall a family member who was allergic to wheat…
He stopped growing at a young age and began to have increasing health problems into his early teens. After a trillion dollars in medical tests they discovered he too was allergic to wheat.
So today as I connected those two things together in my mind, for a moment I imagined that I had stumbled upon the cure for, or cause of depression. Then I imagined the wealth and praise that would follow.
None of it being real in the slightest, but I rode the daydream for a good moment. When I returned to earth I felt embarrassed of myself. Such magical thinking at such an old age.
What am I now like three hundred? Maybe not… Tough to calculate. I have searched for a grasp of control on this realm for quite sometime now. Ever since I first caught glimpse of fear of the future.
I have been searching for that missing link, the one that everyone is after. The one that manifests dreams into real life. That sort of “Big break” puzzle piece.
What is it that some have that others lack, the thing that makes some shine while others seem to squirm in their own skin. Forever I had assumed that this magic piece would be like a universal key. A key that liberates anyone who possessed it.
I have recently discovered something spectacular, something that I never before imagined. I will do my best to share my discovery in the following sentences, however…
Be aware that this is my perception of my truth. There may in fact be ten thousand different sides to this coin, but this is the side that I see.
Like so many others I too had assumed this priceless key to be attainable in this realm. This is why many of us spruce up our game when in the company of famous people; we’re hoping to impress them enough to have them share the secret with us.
Give us a clue as to where our key might be hidden. I have wrongly assumed that because they managed to find theirs, they would be able to direct me towards mine or in the least direct me to the man who would be able to see it inside of me.
That’s what big shot studio cats do, right? They see gold in people, do they not? Are they the ones who discover the gold in stars, or do the stars discover their own gold and then show it to someone in a position to share them with the entire world?
These are so many of my thought patterns back before my discovery, but now… See I had assumed that we all have it, and that we just need the opportunity to meet the right person, then they would see it in us…
Wait a minute, I am writing outside my experience. Forgive me, I has assumed that I had it, and they I just needed the opportunity to meet the person in a position of power and they would see it in me. Like that.
The idea that we can direct this brilliant discovery is now absurd. American Idol is a kind of false fame, an empty sort of success. Rare are the Robert Plants and David Bowie of this headless movement.
This sort of magic can not be recreated in this realm, it must first exist in a hidden realm and then be manifested here… It is not possible in this realm, it is impossible here. This sort of light takes time, maybe even lifetimes to generate. I do not believe that it can be polished out in a few short desperate episodes of fame fueled frenzy.
I’m failing here, fuck… I thought that it was in this realm, that opportunity… that gold, that light. I no longer believe that to be true, in fact I now believe that…
That I have been wasting an incredible amount of energy. One reason for this desperate search for me was that If I stopped searching then I might not ever get what I want… and I would have to face… my life, myself.
Do you see the fatal flaw in this type of thinking… That sort of possessed addiction to a set outcome. This is a gambling type of attitude, the sort of thinking that supports that the world outside has something I am missing.
Where as now my perception senses that this outside realm does not contain me, it contains mirrors to help reflect me. This is why certain struggles keep appearing in my life; to help me see myself more clearly.
When I do someone wrong, the situation returns to me until I can see how it feels. To me this is why Jesus said “In as much as ye have done it unto the least of my brothers, ye have done it unto me.”
Me being my essence, for as I perceive it; Christ is my essence. I believe that this is how he sensed what people were thinking, things like “Why do you harbor evil thoughts.”
I do not believe that Christ was the only reflection of my essence, as others after him had also seen their essence as a collective connection to all and every being in the Universe.
Sometimes when I write things like that I feel terribly uneasy, I fear that I am as whacked out of my ever loving mind as the rest of the bible preaching nut bars. That topic is just incredibly dangerous.
Very well then… Hmmm… My point about all of this insanity, all of this searching, is that so much of it is fueled by and dwells in the realm of discomfort and nonacceptance. What about me shines when my search is led from a place of dis ease.
When I seek success out of not being able to accept myself or my life in the moment I currently abide, how might I prevail? “The Dude abides.” -The Big Lebowski.
To seek it in this realm is to be off track. I have not discovered myself entirely, or even a substantial truth that I can share here, but to me my discovery of where it is not…
Man that’s a huge leap, knowing where not to waste my energy… Hmmm… Again my fear bubbles to the top and cries out “But what about me, what about what I want?!”
There is no faith in fear. To me spirituality is not a belief in humanities gods, but instead a sense of the unknown realm. The invisible.
To me spirituality is similar to the person who understands from their own experience that even though the electrical wire does not appear to contain incredible power, in fact it does.
And although I do agree that this power is… Almighty, I have never agreed with the perception that it asks to be worshiped. I do not sense any insecurity in what I have experienced.
I have experienced incredible consequence for my mistakes, but… It appears to me that there was no way for me here but to pass through there. I have done the best that I could.
Which leads me to my most recent encounter with… Karma. Hmmm… I wonder if I can share this in words. I wonder if this encounter was for us or just for me. It was quite personal an experience.
I was recently hurt by someone close to me. It stirred inside of me, an incredible storm of anger and fear. It took all of my mightiest sails to steady my course and keep from lashing back.
I hated the person who had hurt me and for some fucking sick reason I also felt a sting of love for them. This uncontrollable goodness was just enough reason for me to hate them even more; how dare they make me love them.
But I did, in between the moments of intense anger. The way I saw the scenario as hand was as follows; That in their fear of authority, I felt they had handed me to the Henchmen and left me to die. Fucking coward! Damn you!
I cursed and cursed, but somewhere I sensed something wasn’t quite… revealed. There was something missing and I was betting that it had something to do with me.
Then my inner voice shouted “Fuck you, I did not deserve the fate I was handed. I have done nothing wrong!” and It was right, I did not do anything wrong… not this time I didn’t.
It was many years ago, when I not only handed someone over to the henchmen, but I even pulled the switch. All because I was too afraid to go against authority.
Well since that haunting mistake I have been an avid rebellion against authority, not just a punk kid trying to get my own way but I speak out when things are unfair.
I speak out even at the risk of my own neck, but all because of the time that I didn’t speak out, and I had mistakenly expected this person to do the same for me. So I had been blaming this person for having me hanged, hating him…
When all along it was that he was a perfect reminder to me of who I once was, the coward. A reflection of my sins. It never really had anything to do with me and him, it was all designed to stir those old feelings to the top.
Why? To help me heal? To help me grow? To help me see clearly? Maybe to absorb his mistake as a kind of penance for the things I did in the past.
I had been defending myself as not the one to blame, but somehow seeing his position with compassion helped me to realize that there was little he could have done about it.
He did the best that he could.
Seeing this helped me see that I have been blaming myself for the past, but I too was only capable of so much. It took the pain of my mistakes to further forge me into a better being, strong enough to speak against authority.
I continue to attract situation in my life to help me see myself. I feel blessed, by that I mean that I sense something bigger than my own perception and current understanding to be at work here, in being able to see more clearly this time around.
Not only am I no longer full of hate and fear, but instead I feel grateful for the experience. Maybe that it why I sensed a sting of love all along; he helped me learn and grow.
I do not believe I am a victim, at least not anymore. More and more I sense that all of my experiences are perfectly orchestrated to help me see myself more clearly. I hope my sharing of this experience might help you to see yourself better too.
I feel weak now… and lonely. The night is here and I wish I had someone to talk to, someone who speaks a language that I could understand. Company that might help ease my fear of the dark.
Peace Y’all
Dominic Greco
