My Enlightenment experience – The benefits of a difficult life. A Biography of sorts.

I am going to discuss a lot of the negativity and hardships that have happened to me throughout my life and allow many of you to understand me in a different way, upon initially meeting me most these days people would probably see me as a loving person, this has not always been the case. I once had been filled with a hate and anger for other people caused by other people and life was difficult. I will discuss how having a difficult life actually made my spiritual progression easier, it allowed me to pass through barriers that normally hold people back and finally what happened to cleanse the hate from deep within myself and allow forgiveness.

Growing up I was the youngest male in a family with 3 boys, both of my siblings have a different father than I do. This always made me feel wierd, it was difficult to entirely relate to both of them. There were complications with my mothers pregnancy and when I was born I weighted 2 lbs, 15.5 oz, I was small and stayed in the hospital for a while. Both of my brothers are a bit ( one 7 years the other 9 years ) older than me so they lived at a different time in my mothers life, a time that may have been more difficult financially ( my middle brother always thought I was spoiled ). One of my brothers seemed more interested in his friends throughout my life than in me as his brother, He is the middle brother in the group. The Oldest brother of mine I really looked up to when I was younger, he seemed to enjoy spending time with me even though part of the reason was because having a cute child with you makes interactions with women easier. At that age I did not care what the reasons were, I was happy spending time with my brother. I will speak of my recollection up to age 5 now. As the seasons changed so did my surroundings, For a month of each year during the summer my brothers would spend time with their father and at first it would seem nice to have a break from some of the things the middle brother would do to me. As time went by I would feel alone and when they would come back I would hear stories of wonderful times that they had while I had been missing them. When I was alone, they were together and because of that I felt that they had a bond that was not possible between either of my brothers and I.

At age 5 everything in my world changed, I went from a happy place to a very dark place in my life. I do not recall the exact timeline of these occurances but either way it matters little because some of these events would probably be traumatizing to anyone. The timeline will not be accurate as of timeframes in all cases, I will try to be accurate but at times the topics of conversation may require jumps within the years of my life, back and forth like a pendulum. I went to school and was the smallest, that little fact was enough for a group of people to target me and physically beat me daily, I told my mom I did not want to be here anymore. A feeling that has come up many times in my life and although in the moment it was a difficult emotion to deal with however I now understand that every feeling like that had a purpose and a lesson. My parents dealt with the issue through the school, The teachers were all very resistant to the idea that what was happening could actually be within the realm possibility until the principle went into the classroom and asked who hit me and people put up their hands. I believe I went through therapy at this point in my life, I remember going and talking to a lady and painting things with toothpaste and doing creative things with a lady and my mom.

I went through beavers, cubs and scouts growing up among other extracurricular activities. It was my mothers rule that I had to be in at least one extracurricular activity per year growing up and I had to stick through it for that time because we could not afford to waste money. I remember one beavers meeting there were some older people there as well from cubs and scouts to accept us into the troop or to be in presence of a moment of growth, it was all very ceremonial I am sure as many things were in scouts. As the leaders cleaned up and the parents talked among each other many of the children were playing outside. One of the older kids was bullying me and I defended myself by punching him, it was unfortunate for him that the only thing to punch within my striking range was his genitals. After I punched him because he was teasing me to see how riled up he could get me and what kind of reaction it would produce within me, he grabbed me and picked me up, possibly using one of my arms as a handle and a leg as another. He proceeded to throw me overhead as one would throw a soccer ball. As you can imagine again my parents were furious to find out what had happened and this person was disciplined for his actions. Had he not been teasing me to see if he could make me snap the situation would never have happened. Being the older person at a function around people who are teaching proper morals, He learned it was his duty to lead by example (as all of us.) and guide the younger generations through the ranks of the boy scouts.

When I was 7 something devistating happened. My oldest brother gathered his things, withdrew the money he had in his bank account and without a word, Disappeared. He ran away from his life here with us and went to live with his father, The brother that seemed to enjoy having me around was gone from my daily life. I was left with the brother that seemed to neglect me, if not neglect use me as his entertainment through bullying me with his friends. Although I did receive a lot of bullying from the middle brother and his friends he would not accept outside bullying, he did protect me as well and for that I am thankful. There was a time that Life was good and people knew that if you bullied me, my big brother would pay you a visit. Sometimes the bullying would go too far on the part of him and his friends in my opinion. One time I reached my snapping point and broke a badmitton racket over one of his friends shoulders. I have worked hard through out my life to resolve the temper issue that I recieved from my father, niether of my brothers understood this struggle that I faced through out my life. My brother would often refer to me or think of me as someone who would just freak out and I did not like this. I remember another time where he and his friends decided it was swirly time for me and my best friend at the time whom lived next door, right across the alley. I knew there was no point in struggle against 3 people that were 7 years older than you, However my friend did not. He struggled and they ended up dropping him, he hit his head on the toilet bowl as he fell to the ground. My friend ran home and after this it seemed as if our friendship deteriorated partly due to my brother and his friends actions, partly due to another person in school that was slightly older than me. This person for what seemed to me no particular reason did not like me. This has happened a lot throughout my life and interactions with people have been difficult. This person who lived next door to me and had been best friends with me for several years suddenly cut me out of his life. Once again I felt alone in life, I suppose the alone time has given me more opportunity to think about the deep issues of life than most people.

At the start I had little choice in what I could do through extracurricular activities, Soccer and Cubs. I wanted to do martial arts so my mother also allowed Karate, I did very much enjoy learning however I found that the techniques I was being taught were not very effective aganist a larger opponent. In a Tournament where kicking to the head was not allowed someone kicked me in the head, this was a very unprofessional move on his part. After a year in Karate and gaining my Yellow belt I decided I did not want to partake in Karate anymore, it took me a great number of years after this experience to find a martial art that I was comfortable with.

Soccer for me was fun because I loved to run, However I was not a very skilled player. I felt in this department I was always compared with my older brother because he was skilled in all sorts of sports. My father rarely went to my Soccer games, He only ever went to the away games so he could drive for my mother and such. It was very rare of him to come cheer me on at a game that was held in town. I remember one year we did really well, we trained hard and made it through the lethbridge tournaments among the top in the division. we went to Red Deer and played other teams that were among the top in their area. The hotel had a pool and I had brought some swimming toys with me, Other people saw my toys and wanted to know where to get them. We told the others where we had bought the toys and the next thing I knew nearly every kid there had the same toys at the pool. I had started a fad as I have inadvertantly done many times throughout my life. Yet even though I had created such happiness throughout the community the other kids were rude to me afterwards. I had told them they should be nice to me because I told their parents where to get the toys that were causing them such fun, had I not done that act they would not have had such fun that day. They replied with something like “Who cares its our parents that bought it.”, I seemed unimportant in the equation of life that they saw, instead of thanking me for creating an enjoyable experience I was ignored.

Speaking of negative things happening to me in swimming pools. I remember when I was younger I had a dream a few times, All I could usually remember about the dream was that I was in a pool and something hit me hard and I was mad. About a year after I had this dream, we were with the beavers or cubs – I do not remember which. We were at a swimming pool with a waterslide built in. I went down the slide and a big fat adult guy did not wait long enough to go down. Seconds after I hit the water, about when I was getting recovered with my head out of the water he slammed into me. It hurt a lot but did not break anything, However I was extremely angry at this person and I don’t think I was comfortable going down the waterslide again that day.

I always loved swimming and one time me and the friend that lived across the alley went together. He was the prankster type and enjoyed peoples reactions most of the time, he would do things like shout don’t jump! right as people would be running towards the end of the diving board to watch them attempt to stop and be unable and end up falling off the end thinking someone was there. For his pranks I paid the price. One of the kids he pranked was mad and said something to my friend, when my friend replied he walked up and punched me in the face giving me a black eye even though I had not said anything to him, The other people in the hot tub were shocked at his actions. His parents were called and I am pretty sure my brother scared him pretty bad while he waited for them, to be sure this person would not abuse me again for no reason.

At one point in time one of my birth marks was doing unnatural things and my parents decided it was in my best interest to have it removed by a plastic surgeon. What was supposed to be a scar about the size of a pin head ended up as a scar 3-4 inches long and about 1-2 inches wide. After the surgery I was not allowed to swim, I went swimming every single day prior to this time period. I loved the water more than anything, it was worth it to me to walk to the pool and walk home having my wet hair freeze to my head to be within the water and swim. It was difficult not having that connection to water during the time I could not swim.

Around middle school is when I stopped going to class skating functions, I was never very skilled at ice skating and the bullies simply took advantage of a weakness and took opportunity to disrupt my learning and create a dislike of skating. Later on in my teens I decided to rise against this weakness by form of inline skates. I fell again and again while trying to maintain my balance and within a few hours I was starting to get the hang of it, at first simply going back and forth in front of my house then learning how to turn sharper by going in circles in both directions. Eventually I found that the brakes that were supposed to aid me in stopping were hindering my ability to turn and becoming a hazard. It was time to learn how to stop without breaks by turning my foot sideways and dragging the wheels, I also learned to stop by utilizing my understanding of physics and spinning in a circle to redirect my forward momentum and stop that way. I found being alone easy when I was exercising, I would go around one of the local lakes on the south side of town 4 times a night, stopping for about a 5 minute rest in between. I would enjoy timing myself and going around the lake would take me on average 10 minutes. Making my exercise last me an hour. I always found exercise to be extremely helpful when frustrated, it was a useful tool for me to resolve anger issues even if traditional “working out” never appealed to me I just wanted to be healthy.

Back to the middle school days, many times I did not want to goto school because I was bullied however I found a few good friends during this time, one of them ended up moving away. Another tried to extort me for money because he had spent money on me to play arcade games with him and wanted a return on his investment. Then in the third year I had found a friend that stuck with me until the end of high school when it was time for him to leave the destructive environment he was in, to find himself in another place. However prior to him leaving we often spent time together at my house, his parents tended to treat him as if he was a slave. He was not allowed to leave the house on weekdays, only weekends so we spent the weekends together often staying up late into the night playing video games. My mother would wake up at 5 am to go to work and tell us to go to bed :). He even had his own room in our home he stayed so often, This room belonged to a few of my friends in my early-later teen years.

I was often uncomfortable intruding and staying at other peoples homes because in middle school I was invited to a camping trip with some one I had thought to be a friend. The night before the trip was a sleep over and I had been forced to the ground and handcuffed and not let go. I had wanted to go home that night and skip the camping trip but his mother convinced me to stay and come along. I was saving my last hot chocolate packet for a time when I was cold and wanted warmth, a wasp landed in it before I got even a sip of it I was filled with disappointment. This left a mistrust within me of other peoples personal space, you never know what may happen to you within the walls of other peoples homes. I was visiting a friend one time who had broken his arm or leg ( I don’t remember exactly ), during this time spent with him we had an argument or something and he offered to stab a screw driver into my leg, I was terrified at the time.

During my high school years I was recognized for my Computer knowledge and gained a small group of friends that were into the same things I was, we hosted LAN parties and played computer games together, this was an enjoyable time in my life and these friends stayed in my life until just after college. One of these friends stayed at my house often and we would go on boating outings with his parents on sundays. I loved doing this and having acccess to being able to kneeboard, wakeboard and try the airchair. One time I tried a big jump on the kneeboard, my board caught the water wrong and my leg straps held my legs in, I hit the water and stopped but my board didn’t stop, it proceeded to smash me in the lower back and performed what felt like being bent entirely backwards, I could hardly move and was forced to sit and observe the remainder of the day.

Birthdays… Had a few harsh ones. Usually the ones that society said were supposed to be significant and important. My 13th birthday I wanted to go golfing with my brother, we had made plans and as usual when we had made plans he had forgotten. Instead he was playing pool with his friends, I found out where he was. I walked into the place and started venting my frustration towards him, The owner tried to calm me down and told me I needed to calm down. I responded to him that it was my birthday and I was stood up by my brother, I had the right to be upset and to but out of it. I said my piece and that I no longer respected him and trusted that he would not do anything with me if we ever made plans anyways, That I had given up trying to do things with my big brother, it was no longer worth the pain of looking up to him. After all Everyone liked him, He was a social butterfly and things came easy to him, Both socially and physically, He did not have conflict with my father as I did. It always felt like I was compared to his accomplishments and he set the bar pretty high for me to follow in his footsteps. My dad always spoke highly of him, he focused and worked hard in scouts and gained accomplishments that few scouts do, he got his chief scout award which if I recall means delving into every aspect of scouting and doing well at it, Learning all there is to learn at that age range, Being respected by your peers for your knowledge and being able to relax and enjoy nature because you have completed the tasks already. I could not help but look up to him, it seemed my father respected him more than me during these times. I was humiliated publicly in front of my peers by my father ( whom was a leader, thankfully not my troop leader ) I was small and did not have enough weight to pack my sleeping back properly, so part of it was sticking out the end. In front of everyone he made me tear it apart and attempt to fix it the only way he had showed me how to do it, all the while screaming his head off at me. This technique still did not work for me and eventually he calmed down when he saw how much trouble I had doing this and finally taught me to just stuff the sleeping bag until it all went in, this worked for me. However experiences like this eventually caused me to quit scouting. Forcibly doing activities with the biggest bully of my life was generally not a fun thing, it seemed to me as if he enjoyed negativity. I had to shed the part of myself that idolized anyone in order to limit the pain I received when inevitably I would become disappointed in those I thought of highly.

The next golfing fiasco happened in California, we stayed at a resort on a 5 star golf course. Now this was kind of cool. The place was small and other than golfing there was nothing to do but play pool. It had rained a bit during the days before my birthday, I was turning 16 and all I wanted to do was golf. However when we went to go golfing the course had been closed due to the rain, I was devastated. The purpose of going to this place was so my father could goto a museum of a old cowboy show he used to watch, Roy Rogers. I was never into the whole cowboy thing so I found the entire time quite boring. We drove by a bumper car and minigolf place on the way to this museum, I asked if we could go because I wanted something about the trip to be fun and entertaining, if only one thing. My dad told me we did not have the money to do that, we could not go. He tells me and my mom when we are getting back home that we have money left over from the trip and not just a little bit, when my mom asked how much we had a few hundred left. I felt as if he just wanted me to have a miserable time on the trip when the potential for a happy time existed but was snuffed out.

One time while helping my father a wasp was getting in my face, I did not want it to do anything to me and it was making me anxious and nervious. During this was happening my father was having me hold a piece of sheet metal in place so he could screw it up into the garage, he would not allow me to take the sheet down and wait until the wasp went along its business instead I was told that worse would happen to me than the wasp stinging me if I let the metal slip and cut my fathers hand. I was both terrified of the wasp stinging me and what may happen if I made a mistake…

My father always seemed to hate my ability to use computers proficiently and efficiently, I have never been the type to goto the bar and get smashed. They did not have to worry about this and yet shortly after my 18th Birthday my father decided that he wanted me to have a midnight bed time. I had to get off my computer and goto bed whether I had an obligation the next day or not. This was the rule that he attempted to apply to me, Of course I did not follow his orders. I had discussed with my mother the reasoning of why he was incorrect in his assessment. They knew where I was and did not have to worry about me. I did not get into trouble. I just liked spending time with my friends on the internet and there was nothing wrong with that, it was very healthy for me to do so. My mom ended up stopping his nonsense shortly after it started. Later in life I took computer programming in college and instead of being praised for fixing technological issues that invariably arrive more often than not I am blamed for their occuranced to begin with, Because I know about technology and how to maintain it that automatically makes it my fault when anything goes wrong. I very rarely interrupt peoples technology without prior communicating why I need to do it and that it is going to happen, usually it is resolved within 5-10 minutes and services are restored to a proper functioning order.. Yet I have often been blamed for any intermittency within equipment, for things outside my realm of control.

I could probably write stories for many more pages about how I have felt throughout my life however I feel I have covered enough currently for people to understand that I had a life with many hardships and difficulties however through it all I learned a lot of things. That the outside perceptions of people do not matter anywhere near as much as your own perception of your self, that idolizing people never leads to positivity. We are all human, No one can ever be as grand as you may create them to be in your head. I learned many self control techniques as you may have read in my previous blog postings however the most important lesson I learned through all the bad stuff is that happiness was still and always is possible. During my enlightenment experience I went to the sun and merged with the sun, I have thought of this experience intently and guided a couple people through it recently with varying levels of progression. Everyone has a different level of unknown, Everyone is at a different level spiritually and some may take more time to learn and progress than others and everyone learns at their own pace.

I feel that without all the negative experiences I would not have been able to accept my own inevitable death ( not in a suicidal way ) as easily, which allowed my spirit to be reborn. Purging my chains linked to my negative past and filling my soul with Love. Those experiences still existed with me but I no longer allowed my difficult past to define me. This allowed me to improve as a person and become aware of a different reality, A reality where I was both an observer and a creator of my own and others happiness.