Don Dave

When I left my bicycle business in 1993 I went to work for a company that manufactured bowling equipment. The company was located in the City of Orange just south of Los Angeles in Southern California. The workforce of about 100 was almost entirely Mexican.

The following year the owner of the company decided to move the business to Springfield, Oregon. The State of Oregon, along with the City of Springfield gave him large tax breaks, low rent, and other incentives to move there because of Oregon’s high unemployment rate.

All employees were given the opportunity to move with the company but only about 15 of the original workforce including myself decided to move. When we arrived in Oregon we immediately started hiring; my position with the company was Welding Production Manager so I did some of the hiring.

We were not necessarily looking for skilled workers; we were prepared to train people. We didn’t drug test anyone which may have been a big mistake, most of the people we hired it seemed had been unemployed for so long, they had lost any desire to work. One man I remember started work at 8:00 a.m. I showed him how to do a simple assembly job with a wrench; he worked until 10:00 a.m. when we took a break, he left and we never saw him again.

Another man I hired lived near me and I gave him a ride to work each day because he had no car. He quit after two weeks and stole a box of bronze bushes from the company worth several hundred dollars and sold it for ten dollars to a local scrap metal dealer. How do I know this? I found the bill of sale from the scrap dealer in my car some days later. As fast as we could hire these local workers; they quit. We didn’t fire them; they quit. We maybe found two or three workers we could hang on to.

In desperation the owner contacted some of his original Mexican workers from Southern California and offered them a job. A few of them came and soon the word spread and others followed and by the end of that first year in Oregon our entire workforce was once again almost all Mexican.

I found the Mexican worker a joy to work with. You could take someone who had never welded in his life before; spend about half an hour showing him how, and by the end of the day he was welding with the speed and quality of someone who had been doing it for years. The Mexican has a work ethic like you wouldn’t believe having been taught to work hard from a very early age. In their own country they don’t work just to get by; they have to work hard in order to survive.

If one of their group was not pulling his weight for example the others would say to me, “Juan is lazy.” Not behind his back but to his face. Juan would become embarrassed and we would all have a laugh. He had been shamed into working harder by his fellow countrymen.

They called me “Don Dave,” a high mark of respect they didn’t even extend to the owner of the company. Being an immigrant myself helped, but I believe I got that respect because I treated them with respect; I treated them as I treat everyone, as an equal, neither above me nor beneath me. I learned a few words in Spanish; enough to instruct them on their daily task. They made me look good with the company, because of the quality and quantity of work they produced.

Mexicans would not cross the border each day in their thousands if there were no jobs. People hire them not because the Mexican is cheap labor, but because they work hard, do a good job and often an employer can’t find others to do the work they do.

Just because it’s in the Bible doesn’t make it gospel.

Recently there has been a lot of fiction published purporting to be the truth. Parts of the Bible are historical fact that can be proven, but much of it is a work of fiction written by both known and unknown authors; take the story of Adam and Eve for example. If you take it as fact, it is so full of holes even a six year old child can see through it.

As I see it the author of this particular story whoever he or she might be, was not recording fact but creating a story that is full of symbolism. Take when Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge for example. Now there’s a clue right there.

It was not a Granny Smith apple tree it was a ‘Tree of Knowledge.’ Symbolic of how when human kind’s brain developed he gained knowledge that could be used for both good and evil. In other words human kind learned to sin. As a symbolic story I find its message far more powerful than taking it as fact or history.

Natural Disasters

When natural disasters strike or some personal misfortune occurs people ask how can God let this happen? Well we can’t have it both ways; we are free thinking spirits and as such are free to think either good or bad thoughts. I feel if we were not free thinking with a freedom of choice it would be the worst kind of bondage.

Wrong thinking causes bad thing to happen, thoughts are creative so a person can’t blame God if they hold negative thoughts and the some misfortune occurs. As for natural disasters, well they have always been with us throughout history, but not everyone dies in a natural disaster* so surviving is still up to the individual and their positive thoughts.

*See my post of March 9. 2006.

Pain and Pleasure

It has been said that in order to experience pleasure a person has to know pain; just as a person blind from birth cannot understand the concept of darkness because he has never seen light. Problems arise when seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.

I once heard heard it said or I read it somewhere, “When in pain don’t look for relief, look for the truth.” It took me a long time to understand that, but if I am in pain or suffering from some misfortune I ask myself why? Was it some negative thought I had or something I did, or did I come in contact with someone who sent negative thoughts my way?

The way I deal with negative or bad thoughts coming from somewhere else is to tell myself that any such thoughts or negative energy will be turned around and sent right back to the source. That way I am not compounding the problem by sending out negative thoughts myself.

On seeking pleasure, if happiness is dependent on finding a relationship with someone or finding a new job or a new car; chances are it will elude you. Choose happiness first and everything else will follow.

Truth in Fiction

It saddens me when writers like James Frey pass fiction off as truth just to get published. He has made a large amount of money which he will not have to give back because he didn’t steal it, not technically anyway. Now I read about J.T. LeRoy a former truck stop male prostitute, who also sold a lot of books, turns out to be written by a forty something woman.

Meanwhile my own book Prodigal Child, which is fiction, probably has more truth in it than most if these so called auto-biographies. People constantly ask me, “Is this your life?” My answer is that it is not my life, but that a lot of my life is in there. I believe that even when writing fiction if you write from a point of truth, the truth will touch people and they will know the author has experienced what he is writing.

But the difference is my book, although it continues to sell, (Mainly by word of mouth.) is by no means a best seller, not because it is not a good book but because I didn’t get on Oprah, and I didn’t get a review in The New York Times. But I didn’t pass fiction off as the truth just to get it published so I can at least hold my head up among my friends and my peers. I wonder if certain authors out there would trade some of their millions right now to be able to do just that?

Light

Bring a light into a darkened room and the darkness will disappear; you cannot bring darkness into a room and make light disappear. The way to overcome a negative thought is to substitute a positive one. Affirm the good and the bad will disappear. Positive will always overcome negative, and good will always overcome bad just as light (No matter how small the light.) will always overcome darkness.

Luton

I have led a somewhat nomadic life and never lived in one place longer than ten years. I have lived on both the East and West Coast of the United States since 1979 and even my native England seems like a foreign country to me now because I visit there so infrequently. So where do I call home? I was born in Surrey, England but left there as a baby and have never been back, but there is one place were I lived between 1949 and 1959; I was 13 when I moved there and 23 when I left.

The town is Luton; about thirty miles roughly due north of London. This is where I spent my teen years, where I grew from a boy to a man. So if I have a place I can call my home town it is Luton. This was the town where I was given a second chance. I had failed an exam at age eleven which would have enabled me to go for a higher education. I failed because my schooling was disrupted when we moved three times that year because my father kept losing his job. But at aged fourteen I passed an exam to attend Luton Technical School, which later led to and apprenticeship in engineering. I also learned to build racing bicycle frames; a skill which eventually led to my moving to the US and a successful bicycle manufacturing business in Southern California through the 1980s.

Luton is where I lost my virginity (Standing up in some alley between rows of terraced houses.) We were the first generation of teens after WWII and we wanted to be noticed. We were known as “Teddy Boys.” We wore narrow tight trousers when everyone else wore big wide bottom pants. We went dancing at the George Hotel or the Cresta Ballroom. Luton was the town where I was arrested for punching a police officer. (After he punched me.) My plea of “He started it.” Was not accepted by the magistrate and I was put on probation.

I haven’t been back to Luton for many years. They have a website and a message board where ex Lutonians like me post messages from time to time. Sometimes people are unkind to Luton and I have seen it described as “The worst shit-hole in England.” So what happened? As I remember it was a great town.

The 1960s came right after I left; the boom years when money was being made and being spent just as fast. The Luton Town Council, the politicians, decided in their wisdom to tear down many of the beautiful old buildings and rebuild. A good example is the old library building right across from the Town Hall. (Pictured above.) This building was a gift to Luton donated in 1910 by Andrew Carnegie the American philanthropist.

It was a beautiful old building with great character where I would often stand on its steps and wait for a date to show up. We had no cell phones; heck few of us even had phones at home and we had no cars; we used public transport. So if we made a date we would have to arrange to meet somewhere. The Town Council replaced the library with a soulless glass faced monstrosity.

Like the unscrupulous surgeon who will operate on you whether you need it or not just to take your money, the Town Council in cahoots with the big developers ripped the heart out of Luton. They made it a less desirable place to live so people started moving out. And immigrant population moved in.

Luton today has a huge Moslem population and I have even seen it featured on the TV news here in the US because of some links to the terrorist bombings in London. I’m sure the majority of Luton’s citizens today are law abiding but there always a few who drag down the reputation of a place. Not that I am suggesting you put Luton on your list of must see places if you visit England.

Large Towns and Cities have a soul; it is I believe the collective souls of all the people who live there. New York City for example has a special energy that you feel when you are there. San Francisco and London have it also. Luton definitely had a soul when I lived there, and if it doesn’t have one now maybe it’s because the people who live there don’t have a sense of belonging there. They are nomads like me.

I will probably not go back to Luton I prefer to remember it fondly as it once was and for any ex-Lutonians out there,  and it seems we are scattered all over the world; take comfort in the fact that Luton is a very good place to be from.

You're Safe to Eat Meat on St. Paddy's Day.

This morning I learned that as St. Patrick’s Day falls on a Friday this year the Catholic Church has said that just this once it is okay to eat meat; so you will not go straight to Hell if you eat corn beef and cabbage.

Far be it for me to say what people should eat or not eat or what they should do or not do, but do you really think God really cares if you refrain from eating meat, or pork or if you let your facial hair grow or wear some rag on your head?

These are man made rules dating back to the times when religion was used to control the masses, and there are far more important issues in the world today that need to be addressed.

On a totally different subject the FCC is considering fining Janet Jackson for her wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl. While they are at it maybe they should look into Elvis’s performance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1956.

Child's Play

People will sometimes say to me, “I wish I was creative.” We all start out creative; a child’s imagination is pure creativity. The problem is the creativity gets educated out of the child. A child will come to an adult with some fantastic story and the adult shoots it down immediately with, “Oh that’s not true, you made that up” when probably a better response would be, “Did you make that up? That’s really a cleaver story.”

Children need to be taught the difference between fact and fantasy, but encouraged to be creative because what is writing a novel but making stuff up and writing it down. In other words child’s play.

Unshakable Faith

There have been many documented cases of people being cured of sometimes life threatening diseases simply by faith, prayer, or a positive thought. I make no apologies when I repeat again ‘what is a prayer but a positive thought?’ Even the medical profession is accepting more and more that the mind is a powerful aid in healing.

People travel to Lourdes, France to the shrine of St. Bernadette seeking a cure for their illnesses and other afflictions, many are cured and many are not. If we are to believe in a God that answers prayers, then what kind of God is it that will answer one person’s prayer, but says I don’t think so much of this person and I will not listen to their call for help?

As I understand it is not that God is selective, but the answer is in the prayer itself. We are dealing with a Law here, just as sure as the law of gravity says ‘what goes up must come down.’ The answer is not in the way the prayer is presented, or in the fact that the person has traveled all the way to Lourdes, it is in the undying faith that a cure will be forthcoming.

And that’s the toughest nut to crack even for myself knowing how the Law works, do I have that unshakable faith that it will be so? Because I know this much, even the slightest doubt and it will not work; even ‘wanting’ it to happen is enough to prevent it from happening. I guess because when you want something it means you don’t have it; after all we don’t want for something that we already have.

And therein lies the key; send out the prayer, make an affirmation, have a positive thought then let go of the outcome and act as though it has already happened. I can make it work for the little stuff but the bigger and more important things? I’m still working on it. On the other hand, life is good and I’m in very good health so maybe it’s working more than I think.

Looking for Stuff

Right after I got out of the bicycle business in 1993 I went to work for a company that manufactured bowling equipment. A year later that company moved from Southern California to Eugene, Oregon and I moved with them. Everyone knows how difficult it is to find stuff after you move; imagine what it is like for a company that has just moved into a warehouse facility of over 120,000 square feet.

There were rows upon rows of steel racks 20 ft. high on which wooden crates and pallets full of materials and parts were stacked. In the months that followed people would come to me and ask did I know where such and such a part was? Well how could I know where anything was? I didn’t personally supervise the packing of every crate or the placement of any particular item within the warehouse.

But I did believe in the Universal Mind; an Intelligence that I believe is my intelligence. I would tell myself that the Universal Mind knows everything and therefore knows were the item we are looking for is. Of course I did not tell my coworkers of my belief or they would have looked on me as some kind of crackpot, but I would quietly walk around the rows of steel racks with the strong belief that I would find whatever I was looking for.

In a very short time I would pick out a certain crate or pallet have it lifted down with a fork lift truck and there would be the item I was looking for. On some occasions there would be a number of people looking and someone else would call out that they had found the item. My thinking was this was the Universal Mind we were using so if I personally found the item or someone else was guided to it; the item was found and that was all that mattered. I soon became known as the guy who knew where everything was.

In writing about my experiences here I cannot prove a thing to anyone; to me that is the difference between physics and metaphysics. Physics a person can demonstrate and thereby prove to others. Metaphysics you can only prove to yourself. But the next time you misplace something you might just tell yourself that the Universal Mind knows where it is. It is important that you believe that you will eventually find the item, and you have to let go of the outcome. In other words stop trying to find whatever it is you are looking for. You are dealing with a Law here just like a law of physics; this is a law of metaphysics and this is how it works.  

  

Scapegoat

One of the biggest myths I find in the Christian religion is Satin, the Devil; who or what is this entity? We don’t see him just as we don’t see God, but I can believe in a God because I see Intelligence at work in nature, everywhere. The only evidence I see of a force of evil is nothing concrete just all the wrong doing, crime and suffering that goes on in the world.

I feel that this is brought on my human kind. Being free thinking spirits we are capable right or wrong thoughts and actions. If I make a mistake or do something wrong I take responsibility for it; I don’t say the Devil made me do it. This is a cop out, an excuse. Satin is a myth an invention of humankind, a Scapegoat. No wonder he is depicted with horns and goats feet.

I ask myself this; if there is a God, Universal Intelligence, (Call it what you will.) that created everything; then why would He/It create an entity to oppose Him/It? An invisible entity with somewhat supernatural powers at that. When JC was in the wilderness and was supposedly tempted by the Devil; I feel he was simply pushing negative thoughts from his mind.

When those doubts, those negative thoughts creep in, I sometimes find myself talking out loud to myself to say “Don’t think like that.” Or as JC said “Get thee behind me Satin.” But I am talking to myself to reinforce a positive thought, not some mythical entity.

Voodoo

Voodoo is practiced in certain parts of the world and sometimes a voodoo curse is put on someone and that person dies. There is no medical reason for that person to die but their belief in voodoo and the suggestion is enough to bring about their demise.

I wonder if the media in America does the very same thing by constantly suggesting that one in four people will get this disease and one in five people will die of that disease. And the people believe in this just like voodoo and oblige by dying. A few years ago it was noticed that French people generally eat a high fat diet and yet they have less heart disease than there is in the US.

It has been suggested that maybe drinking red wine as the French do somehow prevents the build up of the bad cholesterol in the body. Maybe so, but can it also be that heart disease is not in the psyche of the French people as a Nation and maybe they are not being told constantly by their media that heart disease is the number one killer in their country.

I hate the way the media in particular television always draws on the negative. Living in South Carolina as I do every year we are told this is going to be the worst hurricane season ever. And I hate when people around here say “We haven’t had a bad one here since 1989, so we are due for one.” I feel like saying, “Good one people, let’s all hold that thought and see if we can make it happen.”

Busy Line

In the aftermath of the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia late in 2004, rescue workers were struck by the relatively small numbers of wild animals and birds that had died in the disaster compared to the large loss of human life.

There were reports of a herd of domestic cattle that suddenly went charging up a hill just before the tsunami struck, and the people who chased after the cattle trying to bring them back were also spared from the disaster.

Scientists wonder as they always do in such situations how do animals receive such premonitions of impending danger, and how come we don’t? I believe it is not so much that the call doesn’t come in, but that when it does the line is busy.

What sets us apart from animals is not the size of our brain or the fact we have opposing thumbs, but language. Knowledge and ideas can be easily passed from one person to another via speech, books and now the Internet.

Animals feel the same basic emotions we do; fear, anger, joy and grief, but they cannot communicate their feelings though language as we do. This blessing bestowed on humankind is also, in many ways, a curse.

Our thoughts are recorded in words and become memories. They get played over and over our minds like old TV re-runs; mindless chatter that often serves no purpose. So when the call comes in to get out of Dodge because the earth is about to open and swallow you up; the line is busy. If only we could install call waiting.

Thoughts

It has long been my opinion that sickness, accidents, and other misfortunes are not the norm, but they are brought on by wrongful thinking either by ourselves, those around us, or even the whole nation as a group.

It has been documented many times cases of serious illnesses being cured by prayer, in other words faith, a positive thought. If illness can be cured this way, maybe it can be brought on by negative thought in the first place.

Why Worry?

I have heard worrying described as ‘Mourning an event that has not happed.’ The only thing I can be sure of is this moment, right now as I sit reading this. The future is not real it is only imagined, so why imagine the worst thing that can happen? Thoughts are creative and the very thing I fear I can make happen. If I drive down the road thinking, “I am going to have an accident” there is a high probability that I will have an accident, when the odds of my not having an accident are far greater than having one?

In worst case scenarios the odds of that actually happening are often less likely than a more positive outcome. So the approach I take is to say “There is a good possibility this won’t happen, but if it does then I will deal with when I get there.”

Heathens

The Native Americans were referred to as heathens by the early Christian settlers of this country. But in many respects they were closer to their God than many of those Christians, because they saw themselves as a part of nature, not separate from it.

Seeing oneself in this light there is the realization that everything we see, smell, and touch is God manifest so that must include us. So when JC said “I am the son of God.” What if he meant we are all sons or children of God? Then his statement, “The only way to the Father is through the Son” takes on a whole different meaning. The only way to God is through ourselves.

This is just this one man's heathen point of view.

Survival

Not the TV program but the basic instinct that all creatures of this planet have, including human kind. It’s like we are placed here and told “Survive” but we are not told how. Some of us think in order to survive everyone must love us and we go through life trying to please others and get their approval.

Others think that in order to survive they must control others and get them to comply with their will. It’s easy to see how these two groups pair off; each fulfills a need in the other. This behavior is so basic we see it all the time in the animal world; the alpha male controlling the others and the rest submissive and trying to please their leader.

But we are above this primitive behavior; we are individual free thinking spirits. We do not need the approval of others in order to survive; we can do nothing else but survive. The only approval we need is our own approval and this realization brings peace and freedom. By not seeking the approval of others we cannot be controlled by them.

Love

Love is a dog that will bite you
And tear your world apart,
Love is a hammer to knock you down
Drive a nail right through your heart.
Then there’s love that will tap on your shoulder
When you least expect it to call,
It’s the very best kind, the love that you find
When you’re not even looking at all.

Planning Ahead

The simple things in life we plan ahead; for example going to the grocery store. We plan the meals we are going to make and make a shopping list. When we get in the car we have a plan of the route we are going to take, if we need to make a detour to get gas or buy something from another store we decide ahead of time the order in which we a going to do things. We cannot imagine driving around aimlessly until we just happen upon a grocery store.

And yet so often when it comes to the big things in our lives, careers, relationships, our whole future we have no plan; we drive aimlessly around. I am often guilty of this which is why I am writing this piece, but I tell myself I am at least aware of it. Being aware of a problem is half way to fixing it.

The Past

No matter how hard we try the past is never going to get any better. All we can do is accept it, deal with it, and move on.

Those of us who had a particularly hard past can take comfort in the fact that we survived it, and it takes a strong person to do that.

Truth

What is the truth? I believe the only way to find the truth is to discard everything that is not the truth. Like looking for a diamond in a truck load of gravel; the only sure way to find the diamond is to discard everything in the truck that is not a diamond.

Where do we start and what can we be sure of? We know there is life because we have life. We know there is consciousness because we are conscious, but consciousness cannot be something in consciousness. Where is the source of consciousness?

I believe intellectualizing about such things tend block us from finding the truth. And do we really need all the answers to live a happy productive life that will benefit ourselves and others we come in contact with?

Loneliness versus Being Alone

Being alone and being lonely to me are two different things. I was never as lonely as I was in one of my marriages, and on the other hand I have lived alone and not been lonely. To me loneliness is a state of mind.

If happiness depends on your being with another person you are wide open to being controlled by that person because they can leave at any time and take away your happiness.

To be happy while being alone is complete freedom because no one can take that from you.

I’ll paint the picture

I’ll paint the picture
With no clouds of gray,
I’ll paint bright tomorrows
No regrets for today.
I’ll paint over sad memories
So they won’t show through
I’ll paint the picture
And I’ll leave out the blue.

From the novel Prodigal Child by E, David Moulton.

Just what we need; a new religion

I learned on CNN News this morning about Universism a new religion. I checked out their website and while I agree with many of their views I was left with the question; do we really need another religion?

Their main stand is that this is a religion without faith; without any rules for the individual to follow. If there are no rules or guidelines why do you need to belong to an organization? Surely an individual can figure things out for themselves, there are countless books out there and information on the Internet.

This is an organization and the very word implies something that it is organized. If it has no rules it is not an organization it is chaos. I see nowhere on their website where they ask for a donation of money and I applaud that, but when you start to organize meetings etcetera there are certain expenses and the money has to come from somewhere. Before too long this becomes a business.

My question is; why do we have to belong to something? Why do we need a label for our beliefs? The leader of this group is all of 30 years old; it took me at least 50 years to realize I had problems that I needed to address. Twenty years later I have figured out a lot of things, but I still have issues I need to deal with. The late, great Sri Nisaragadatta said “No one can help anyone until they are beyond needing help themselves.”

I will always help someone if the occasion arises, but it is not my place to go seek out people to help, and not my place to force my opinions on others. I live my life by two simple rules:
1. I try not to harm anyone; in thought, word or deed.
2. I take responsibility for my own happiness.
Think about it, if everyone on this planet did just that it would be the end of all our problems. God would say, “My experiment worked. Game, set, match.” And the Universe would self destruct.

Why Write?

I have been an artist most of my life; I have painted pictures and created functional art in the form of racing bicycle frames. I get high on creativity, high on the feeling of euphoria when I step back and look at what I have created. And like a junkie there came a time when the art I created no longer gave me that high. I needed a better fix, so I turned to writing and songwriting.

It is one thing to apply paint to canvas and create a picture, or to assemble pieces of metal together and make a solid object. But to assemble words on paper or even in your head, to me is the ultimate form of creativity. It is truly creating something out of nothing, pulling something out of the air, so to speak.

Songwriting takes this a step further because you are pulling musical notes out of the air and adding to the words. Paul McCartney was once asked if he got a thrill from hearing his music performed by other artists. He replied that the biggest thrill he got was from walking down the street and hearing someone singing or whistling one of his songs.

Most of us will never see the work of Michael Angelo or an original Picasso if we do it will only be for a moment. But the written word or recorded music can be shared by anyone, even for free. No one will charge you a fee to sing a Beatles song in your shower.

Language is the greatest gift given to human kind; it is what sets us apart from the animals. Animals have feelings; they feel happiness, grief, and anger but cannot express those feelings to others. I can assemble words, and if I do it right, can make others laugh or cry, or bring out other emotions, just by hearing or reading those words.

I can paint pictures with words. Pictures more vivid and real than I could ever paint on canvas. And the picture I paint will be different for each individual. I remember as a child listening to plays on the radio. The scenes I saw in my mind were real because they took place in my house and my neighborhood. I was in the scene, not on the outside looking in as I would be viewing film or television.

Through my writing I can re-live my life; I can do the things I wish I’d done and say the things I wish I’d said. Writing is wonderful therapy and the question I always ask myself as I finish something, is "Am I a better person for having written this?" If the answer is "yes" then this is reward in itself; but if someone else could become a better person for having read my work, then this would be the ultimate reason I write.

Universal Intelligence

I believe there is a Universal Intelligence at work in the Universe. You only have to watch one of those nature documentaries on TV about the rain forest to see this Intelligence at work. A colony of soldier ants moves through the jungle and they come to an obstacle, some of the ants will link their legs together to form a living bridge for the rest of the ants to cross over.

How do they do it? The scientists ask. How do they communicate? To me the answer is simple they are guided by Intelligence in the same way the swallow and the salmon find their way back to the place of their birth. The same way every organ and cell in my body functions without any conscious thought from me. You may as well ask how my heart communicates with my kidney, or my stomach with my liver.

I also believe that this same Intelligence is my intelligence. It is not in my brain, my brain is simply the receiver. This accounts for reason you can be thinking of someone and the phone rings and it is that person. Or you can be talking to a friend about a third person and that person will show up. This is such a common occurrence that we have a saying for it. We say, “Speak of the Devil.”

The Universal Intelligence knows everything; the answer to any problem is out there. Whenever I misplace some thing, I quietly tell myself “The Universal Mind knows where this item is.” I go on quietly looking and always find the item. This will only work if I believe it will, which is where faith comes in. The slightest doubt and it will not work.

I believe this Universal Intelligence is what some people refer to as God; only I don’t need to belong to some religion or other to connect with It. Human kind is the only species that requires that we belong to a religion. All other species seem to survive without it. Of course animals can’t go to Heaven, but to me Heaven and Hell are what we create for ourselves here on Earth. We all know people whose lives are filled with trouble and turmoil. A living Hell brought on by their negative thinking.

Let me ask this; if human kind disappeared from the face of this planet, what would happen? Nothing really; the Earth would keep turning, the sun would still rise in the east and set in the west. Rain would still fall; water would run into rivers and flow back to the ocean; plants and animals would flourish. In time cities man had built would crumble and decay; forest would revert back to forest, and desert back to desert. The same Intelligence that runs the whole show now would continue to run things.

This Intelligence is my God; the one within myself. I don’t need to go the Tibet or India to find Him, It is where ever I am. I don’t pray to Him; I just try to keep good positive thoughts, because after all what is a prayer but a positive thought? And as for praising God, what’s that all about? God has an ego that we need to praise Him? I find it doesn’t hurt to thank God once in a while. By doing so I acknowledge the existence of the Universal Intelligence and I am re-enforcing my own belief.

The Apple Tree

Some go in search of the truth and in doing so find themselves; others look for themselves and then discover the truth. The two are connected and you cannot find one without the other. Like looking for an apple tree and on finding it you discover the fruit; or you go in search of the apple and then discover the tree it grows on.

Look after your body

Take care of your body; otherwise where are you going to live?

Prodigal Child

I used to lie in the long grass
And watch the world go by,
As a child my world was happy
Only people made me cry.
And if the sun had never set
I wouldn’t have gone home,
The moments I remember
Were the times I spent alone.

I owned castles in the sky
And horses that could fly,
They’d take me there on golden wings
To a place where no one cried.
I go back there for a while
And always know that I’ll
Be welcome there,
A Prodigal Child.

When I grew up they told me
There were no castles in the sky,
And I should not imagine things,
It was wrong to tell a lie.
If I worked and studied hard,
Climbed the ladder of success,
Then money and its power
Would ensure my happiness.

So busy counting what I’d made
I didn’t count the cost,
And things I thought I needed
Weren’t missed when they were lost.
With all the knowledge I had gained,
After all the things I did,
I realized I had it all
When I was just a kid.

I owned castles in the sky
And horses that could fly,
They’d take me there on golden wings
To a place where no one cried.
I go back there for a while
And always know that I’ll
Be welcome there,
A Prodigal Child.

This is the only novel with a title song, as far as I know

He could have been my hero.

Every time I see images on the news of soldiers in Iraq I think about a faded photograph I have of my father taken somewhere in the Sahara Desert in 1941 during the early years of World War II.

My father was called into service in September 1939 the month the war started. He was part of the North Africa Campaign and fought Rommel’s German Army for almost five years. He came home briefly in 1944 and then went over to France as part of the Normandy Invasion that same year. He went through the whole war without injury of any kind. I often wonder, ‘What if he had died?’ I would have the faded snapshot you see above, my mother would have told me wonderful stories about him and he would have been my hero from that time on. Instead he turned out to be a cruel and abusive father. It has taken me many years to understand and to finally come to terms with that.

Each time I look at this photo I think about the other men pictured here. Most of them smiling; the one in the center playfully pulls the ear of the one next to him. The war would go on four more years after this picture was taken; how many of the others in this small group survived the war? Half of them, less than half?

I wonder about those who died and the families and children they left behind. I also think of those like my father who survived the war. What kind of fathers did they turn out to be? Maybe not all as abusive as my ol’ man but I’m sure some were less than perfect and had less than ideal relationships with their children.

We none of us get to choose our parents and unlike a marriage a relationship with a parent never ends, it is only varying degrees of good or bad. As children we look on our parents as these all-powerful God like beings, only to find as we grow they are human with all the human flaws and weaknesses.

I can forgive my father. Why? Because he didn’t know any better. If that sounds like a cop out and I am making excuses for him, what’s the alternative? That I remain bitter and angry and go on blaming him. My childhood has long gone and the past is never going to get any better no matter how hard I try.

The truth is he didn’t know any better. Before the early 1950s our society made it acceptable for a man to beat his wife and kids. Even the education system did it, they called it corporal punishment but it was abuse legal or not. There was a theory that if a child had some developing character flaw, it had to be beaten out of them. The problem was when the child became an adult they still had the character flaw plus they were bitter and angry because of all the beatings they had taken. Left alone character flaws become their own punishment and most intelligent persons will correct them on their own.

My father never talked about his childhood but I know he was a rebellious kid. His parents made him join the British Army at the age of nineteen because they could do nothing with him. I sure he took some terrible beatings as a child and he later continued the cycle of violence. My mother also suffered physical abuse at the hands of my father, but I was able to break this cycle of wife beating partly because my mother always told me what a cowardly act it was for a man to hit a woman. Also effecting my own behavior the changing social awareness and the fact that I had two daughters. I feel I may have been less tolerant had I had a son.

I tried to make peace with my father while he was alive but he could not see that anything he had done was wrong, much less ask forgiveness from me. Plus his dislike, even hatred for me remained. It was only after his death in 1996 I could finally accept the way he was and offer forgiveness for my sake so I can move on.

What if he had died in WWII would my life have turned out different or would I still be mourning the loss of my hero? A man far greater than he could have ever been in real life. I have seen the sons of highly successful fathers struggle to live up to an image they can never achieve. My ol’ man made it easy for me to be better than he was. His heavy drinking turned me off drinking to excess so I’ve never had a problem with alcohol. And I do recognize his contribution during WWII. He had no choice; he was drafted. But because he did what he did, I would never have to. For that much he is my hero.