A Hand in
The Crowd
... a quest for truth and love
autobiography by Ron Decuir
The Book
There is a Book that many know about,
but its words are known by few.
There is a Book that many fear,
who've never read it through.
There is a Book that many have
just sitting on a shelf.
There is a Book that all must read
for truth about the self.
~
This is a true story.
Some names have been changed to protect the guilty.
"You shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free."
John 8:32
to those who have never read the Bible
Contents
3 Adultery
4 Sorcery
5 Insanity
12 Apology
13 Epilogue
A Hand in The Crowd
Ron Decuir 2001
This book is
presented for academic study only and is released with the
stipulation that it be freely distributed without charge.
The Washington
monument was tall with tiny windows in the top. All of the buildings
in D.C. were huge. Neo-Nazis paraded by the fence of the Capitol
building as I jumped into a taxi with the other guys and headed to
the airport for our flight home. We had been in meetings with the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission applying for a license to build a
nuclear power plant in Texas. Now, with the red tape and bureaucratic
games behind us, we were ready to kick back and relax.
Since drinks
were free in first class, we would see how many we could down between
take off from Dulles and touchdown at DFW. We were obnoxious and loud
and kept the stewardess busy. Our boss, Bob, sat quietly reading as
we cracked jokes and made fools of ourselves. Toward the end of the
flight, the stewardess leaned over to Bob and asked him, "Sir,
you've been sitting there for the entire flight reading that book
while your traveling companions have been wild. It must be a really
interesting book. What is it?" He held it up to show
her,"The Bible", he said.
Bob was a real Jesus Freak. We all mocked him. He was always talking about Jesus, having prayer meetings at lunch time, and was always smiling. The man was weird.
__________
The year
before, I was thirty-three years old, draft status 1-A, and worried
about the U.S. entering the Yom Kippur War in the Mideast. In the
war, Egypt and Syria were allied against Israel. I asked Bob what he
thought was going to happen in the war. He said, "Don't you know
what's going on? It's all prophesied in the Bible. Get one and read
it." So I went to the bookstore and bought a nice leather-bound
Bible and looked through it, but didn't make much of an effort to
read it.
The Bible is
about the hopeless condition of man without God, and about the hope
man has in Jesus, but I didn't know that. All I knew about was the
hopelessness of trying to be perfect, trying to keep a bunch of
religious rules, and going to church. I had been through enough of
that in my childhood and youth, had a real bad taste in my mouth from
all of it, and wasn't interested in trying to digest any more of it.
I hated
Christians and anything that resembled Christianity. I couldn't
believe that all the other religions could be wrong. Why would a
Loving God make it so that only one religion was right, and all the
Moslems, Hindus, Atheists and Agnostics would go to Hell because they
didn't believe in Jesus Christ?
Bob was talking to me about having a relationship with Jesus, not about religion. I didn't know the difference, and at the time I didn't care to find out. "ONE WAY JESUS" signs were on back of old busses and on telephone poles; cars carried bumper stickers saying "HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS", and "IN CASE OF RAPTURE THIS CAR WILL BE UNMANNED." Fanatics at work talked about being "Born Again," but I didn't know what those buzz words meant. I didn't want to take the time to listen to that crazy stuff, or study the Bible, or have anything to do with God. I was too busy trying to earn a living and keep my marriage together. Anyway, the Mideast war ended, so my crisis was over and I dismissed the whole thing.
__________
I was born in
a quiet little farming town in Louisiana, where cotton and sugar cane
fell off carts onto the road, women burned candles and said their
beads, Whites bowed to the Priests, and Negroes bowed to the Whites.
My parents were French Catholic so I was raised in the Catholic
Church. The Priests told us what we had to believe. To question any
of the things they taught us, or to wonder if what they taught us was
true or not, was a Mortal Sin that would send us to Hell. We were
told that The Bible was the Word of God, but we were also told that
we were not able to understand it ourselves. We just had to go along
with whatever we were told to believe. When you think about it,
that's quite a dilemma to be in.
I was a very
religious child and did my best to keep all the commandments. I was
proud of myself because I didn't cause too much trouble at home or at
school. I hid behind my image of a good little boy, trying to prove
my sainthood by pointing at other people who did "worse"
things than me.
My childhood
was rather ordinary. Santa Claus, Superman, The Pope, and Mary were
my idols. Santa Claus was like God: all-seeing, all-knowing, and
omnipresent, watching and judging everything I did. Superman flew
through the air and was all powerful. The Pope was the "Holy Father"
infallible and unquestionably right on all religious matters, and
Mary was my standard of perfection and my go-between to Jesus.
Back then, I was a dreamer who led three lives. The first was enjoying the company of my family and friends. The second was a road of darkness, paved with vain attempts to gain approval from God, a road colored with stained glass, Holy Pictures, Holy Water, grand pageantry, incense, and chants to God. He was a distant god, inaccessible and unapproachable, surrounded with an immense pit of fire called Purgatory. To reach him I would eventually have to go through the fires of Purgatory after death. That's what I had to look forward to. I had no peace, no joy, only fear. On the surface I smiled, but I wasn't really happy, because a deep sense of dread covered everything. My third life was a life of fantasy, in which I dreamed of the love and acceptance I couldn't get from God. I was still living that life.
__________
By the time
the airplane touched down in Dallas, I had managed to down at least
ten drinks. We got our luggage, said our good byes and I stumbled
into the parking garage to try to find my car. After I got home, I
pulled into the driveway, walked in the back door and went inside to
see my family. My wife, Barbara, saw me first and asked "Did you
have a good trip? The boys missed you." Our sons Jeff and Gavin
came running in to see me and I told them a few things about my trip
to Washington.
Barbara and I had grown far apart. We pretty much did our own thing. She had her friends and I had mine. One of my friends was Cynthia, a free-thinker and "seeker of truth" like me. We talked about the meaning of life, who we really were, if there really was a God, and all the usual stuff like that. Cynthia had a friend, Margaret, who was heavily into witchcraft. I thought that was strange, but that was their business.
__________
It was October
1974. The night before the annual football game between the arch
rivals Texas University and Oklahoma University. There were many
parties that night and I was going to one with Cynthia. I changed
clothes and drove over to Cynthia's house, picked her up and we went
to the party together. I was already bombed when we got there. The
party was rather dull and anticlimactic after my drinking bout on the
plane. We met two of our friends, Elvira and Paul, at the party. The
four of us were bored, so we decided to leave. Cynthia said "My
Brother-in-Law, Anton, sent me a joint he called "Primo."
Let's go to my house and smoke it." We left the party and drove
to Cynthia's house.
Roll up,
roll up for the magical mystery tour...The magical mystery tour is
hoping to take you away, Hoping to take you away. Roll up, roll up
for the magical mystery tour. 1
I had rolled
up some of Cynthia's Marijuana once before, but it didn't do anything
for me so I didn't expect much to happen this time. The four of us
sat on the floor, Cynthia lit up the joint and passed it around.
I had drunk
about 15 mixed drinks since leaving D.C. The joint was dusted with
angel dust (PCP). It hit us like a freight train. We were all
overcome. Time slowed to a stop. The room filled with a heavy smoky
fog. We couldn't stand up when the fog came. We would curse it and
fall to the floor until the fog left. This happened over and over again.
I am he as
you are he as you are me and we are all together..." 2
I looked at
Cynthia and Elvira. Parts of their bodies were switching from one
person to the other. I would touch Elvira's arm and it would turn
into Cynthia's. We couldn't believe this was happening. We started a
tape recorder to record the experience. The recorder appeared to run
backwards. Paul and I played a chess game on the floor with our
bodies. I struggled to my feet and looked at my body. It looked like
a car radiator with arms and legs sticking out of it.
The
magical mystery tour is coming to take you away, Coming to take you away. 3
My head was
full of rainbows. Voices of dark angels told me, "Let go and
relax. We want to come into your head." I felt that my head
would explode and expand into the stars.
The
magical mystery tour is dying to take you away, dying to take you
away, take you away. 4
I thought I was going to die, and I was worried about who would take care of my boys. I picked up the phone, called Anton, and asked him, "What's in this joint you sent Cynthia?" He laughed and said "You are just going through 'Ego death.' Relax and enjoy it." I cursed him out and slammed the phone down. I was terrified. I didn't want to pass out because I knew the dark angels would get me. I fought them off as long as I could. Elvira held my hand and giggled, trying to get me through it. We all finally passed out.
__________
The Magical
Mystery Tour had taken me away. I became demon-possessed and mad.
When I woke up, everything was "peace, oneness, and love."
That night was
the beginning of a tour that would lead to me farther on into the
darkness through adultery, magic, and mystery to insanity and
eventually to a mental hospital.
It was a
strange sort of tour, a journey from reality. The advertisements were
grand, the adventures were alluring, the sting was numbing, and the
trip was long. While I was traveling, I didn't notice things were
changing. The scenery seemed somewhat dim and the illusions were
strong. The godhood I was promised turned out to be confusion and
despair. Such are the lies of the serpent.
__________
I blamed my
lack of love and my misfortunes on Barbara, society, and fate. Truth
and God were vague concepts that probably didn't exist. My food was
bitterness and spite. My countenance was painted on with pride and
deceit. In short, I was the exact likeness of my ancestors from Eden.
Nothing had changed during the six thousand years since they were
thrown out of the garden. People were born year after year, day after
day, second after second. I was just one of them.
Barbara and I
had gone to college together. I had gone to college to get an
engineering degree because I was told that engineers made good money.
We were married in June of 1963, a week after graduation. Marriage
was supposed to make people happy, but my false expectations of
marriage creating happiness didn't come true any more than my
expectations of money making me happy did. We had some fun times
through the years. We tried to be happy, but didn't have peace or
joy. Both of our families were good to us and encouraged us in
whatever we did, but we weren't content. We were constantly looking
for some new entertainment to stimulate us and make us happy.
Parties with
our friends in the night club circuit were our thing, but all of the
dancing, drinking, and partying didn't make us happy. I always
wondered why some other couples seemed happy but we weren't. We
didn't agree on very much and didn't have a clue about life or truth.
When problems came in our marriage we didn't know where to turn, so
we argued and fought. Barbara wanted us to go to a marriage counselor
but I was too proud to believe that there could be anything wrong
with me.
Our parties
had become a rut. We would dance, sweat, and get drunk to the music
of the popular songs of the day. The music led me on like the pied
piper as I listened more and more deeply to the prophetic lyrics of
the modern troubadours, trying to find out what message they had for
me. I wondered why these poet musicians were different from those of
us who would just danced to the music. I wondered where they got
their words.
Masses of
slumbering humanity went through their daily motions that ran to
cold, dark graves. I was one of them, working, eating, partying, and
sleeping. My life had no direction, no purpose other than just
perpetuating the human race in the same mold that it had been running
since the beginning of time. Self-reliance, pleasure, and survival
couldn't be all there was. There had to be meaning to life.
The war in
Vietnam was over. I was tired of the night shift and long road trips
so I had quit my job at the aircraft plant and gone to work for
Dallas Power and Light Company.
There had been
no sigh of relief like there usually was after a war. There was
change in the air. Winds of disillusionment, unrest, and uncertainty
were blowing strong, and I set my sails to catch them. I decided to
find out the truth about God for my boys' sake, so I began my search
for truth and set off on a quest to find the promised land. I wasn't
satisfied with anything I had ever heard or felt in religion,
relationships, or technological civilization. I no longer held any
belief or doctrine sacred and studied everything that I could get my
hands on, looking for something that really worked. I dug and sifted
through all sorts of ideas, trying to put the puzzle together. Most
everything I had read said that man was perfectly good and his
problem was merely ignorance of his condition, ignorant of how
wonderful he was. Man has just forgotten that he is god.
Facing a
dying nation...Listening for the new told lies with supreme visions
of lovely tunes...Let the sun shine, the sun shine in. 1
The music from
the musical "Hair" had sparked my interest in the New Age.
It made a promise of freedom so I followed it. Others like The
Beatles, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau, Herman Hesse, Lao Tse and
Meher Baba were all describing the same journey of transcendental
transformation of consciousness into godhood. They were travel agents
booking flights of the mind and soul. I followed them because I was
looking for another realm of reality. I wanted the transformation of
consciousness that The New Age promised. I wanted it because I was
troubled in ordinary reality and had no love. I was looking for signs
and wonders, and I thought the answer was to escape. The New Age
prophets had done their job well and their influences were heavy on
me. I went along eagerly taking my first steps into mysticism and the
New Age.
It had begun
with yoga, meditating on candles, and chanting. It didn't seem to be
having any affect, but the change was very subtle so I didn't notice
it. I was slowly getting drawn deeper and deeper into the occult. I
learned how to cast Horoscopes and I did them for my friends, but it
had become more than a parlour game to me. I didn't know I was
playing with fire, and at that time I didn't care. I was impatient
for change so I turned to drugs and that had led me to the Angel dust experience.
__________
The day after
the Angel Dust experience, Elvira, Paul, Cynthia, and I went to Ola
Podrida, a craft mall in Dallas. The month before, I had done some
photography for Elvira and Paul and they wanted to have the photos framed.
We had lunch
together and talked about the drug trip of the night before. Paul was
still in disbelief. He said, "I've tried a lot of stuff before,
but that was something else." Elvira sat close to me, watching
me. I was still very stoned and full of "Peace, Oneness, and Love."
Elvira and
Paul were open-marriage advocates, and very open about it. They both
had extra-marital sexual affairs with other people and thought it was
healthy for their marriage. They believed that married people
couldn't meet all of the needs of their marriage partner.
There was
nothing new about open marriage. The troubadours had sung of it as
courtly love. Camelot and chivalry had glorified it. It had been
called by many names through the years, but it was really just
another name for adultery and unfaithfulness.1
The following
Saturday, Elvira called me and asked, "Why don't you and Cynthia
come over to our house tonight? Paul has some music he wants you to
hear." I called Cynthia and she said, "Fine," so I
picked her up and we went to their house. We smoked some more grass
to the music of Shawn Philips. Cynthia and Paul were sitting on the
floor talking. Elvira and I lay on the floor kissing. The loud music
had awakened Elvira's youngest daughter who walked up to us and
asked, "Mommy, why are your kissing Ron?"
As we were
leaving, Elvira told me, "Next week, Paul is going out of town
on a business trip, why don't you come over Tuesday morning?" In
affairs, who knows who is seducing who? Both are on the make; both
fall in the pit together. Actually evil spirits were seducing both of us.
The following Tuesday morning I went to work as usual. At 8:30 I told my secretary, "I've got a doctor's appointment, so I will be gone for a while." I left the building, drove over to Elvira's neighborhood, and parked in a hospital parking lot so I would not be seen by her neighbors. I walked over to her house where she met me in her nightgown. She had prepared a lavish meal with artichokes and wine. We smoked some more marijuana and started our sexual adulterous fling. I returned to work stoned and reeking of wine, but I didn't think any one noticed my absence or my drunken condition. This began an affair that would last four years, drawing me away from my family and friends.
__________
Fountain
of Sorrow, fountain of life, you've heard the hollow sound of your
own steps in flight. 2
Every year,
Barbara and I had a New Year Party with our old crowd. For New Year
1975, the party was at a Ginger and Alan's house. They lived two
doors down from us. Elvira and Paul came to the party with Larry and
Evelyn, a couple they had an Open Marriage relationship with. Elvira
told me she wanted to break off our affair. I took her over to my
house and said, "We were too much in love to break this
off." Looking back, I see that God was giving me an opportunity
to repent, but I didn't take it. The people at the party were
scandalized at our behavior, but we didn't care. We just got stoned,
and danced to
Fountain of Sorrow
by Jackson Browne. It was "our song."
Have You Ever Been Mellow
Mandy
Laughter in the Rain
Best of my Love
My eyes
adored you 3
I adored
Elvira, and lived on the fantasy that she was my soul mate, that we
would eventually get married, and we would live happily ever after. I
stayed stoned all the time, and lived in a world of magic, sex, and
sorcery, soaring on my fantasy flight of marijuana. I would leave my
office building to smoke a joint before business meetings, thinking
it was the only way that I could "relate to the
establishment." I would visit with Bob in his office and he
would tell me, "Jesus Loves you." He would pray for me with
tears in his eyes. I thought to myself, "He has Jesus and I have
my drugs. We both have peace so what's the difference?" The
difference was that Bob really cared for me, and I knew it.
Elvira and I preached open marriage and drugs as the way to bliss as we had our unabashed romance through countryside and city. Our scene was a romantic fantasy. I was intoxicated with the affair. We were shamelessly bold and crude. We flaunted our affair in front of our mates, and thought we were noble, high consciousness people. We weren't hypocrites like the "straights" who had their affairs on the side, and hid them from their spouses. We had our affair in the open, but we still tried to hide the depths of our debauchery from our children.
I suppose I
believed my kids didn't know what was going on. They probably did,
because the music was loud and so was the talk, and the smell of
marijuana and alcohol filled the air. I set a terrible example for
them with my adultery and extra-marital sexual affairs. I instilled
the idea in them that sex outside of marriage was all right. I gave
them a poor example about what marriage was really about, and what
being a good dad was about, because I didn't know myself.
One of the
philosophies of Open Marriage was that it was a goal free
relationship. The theory was that marriage and commitment brought the
end of lightheartedness and fun. Elvira didn't want commitment but I
wanted commitment from her. It wasn't goal free for me. I really
wanted conquest. Open marriage was a farce. We were playing mind
games trying to hide from the guilt and shame of our adultery, and
trying to hide from the brokenheartedness we felt because our
marriages were messed up.
The Open
Marriage adultery scene was really tragic. We were looking to our
affair for satisfaction, while trying to maintain a good relationship
with our spouses. We were living a cruel joke.
I thought I was in love with Elvira. What a mockery to say our affair was love. It wasn't love, it was selfishness, pride, romance, and lust. Romance isn't love, it is giving to get, "loving to be loved." That's why marriages based on romance suffer so much, because the relationship is built on selfish love, and selfish love never satisfies.
Drugs had
given me a taste of the transformation of consciousness promised by
the New Age, but it didn't last. When I first encountered the demonic
world, I was terrified. Now I sought after the same dark world which
had terrified me. My drug experiences were never as powerful as the
first time, when I encountered the Dark Angels of smoke. Satan's
promises were always empty and fleeting. He never delivered the
utopia that I always thought I'd find right around the corner. He
offered me peace and love, but I didn't have peace. I just had
unconsciousness, unhappiness, and frenzy. Drugs promised an expanded
consciousness, but delivered the opposite. Vision on drugs was like
the vision of a horse wearing blinders, or the vision one has looking
at the world through a knothole in a fence. I thought I was seeing
things more clearly, but my perception was being restricted. The
drugs blocked out the annoying impediments of morality and common sense.
My false
expectations of self-reliance, romance, drugs, and adultery had not
served me well. I lived in fog of illusion. I journeyed deeper into
Occultism and magic, trying to escape my mind with its thoughts,
frustrations, memories, and guilt.
In Occultism
and the New Age all that appeared was illusion, false creations of
ego and thought. The path was not evolution, it was devolution;
journeying backwards into thoughtlessness, nothingness, and
non-existence. It was becoming one with the un-manifested spirit, the
impersonal god. Freedom from the concept of self was the goal,
escaping the apparent world of forms. God was only ego holding on to
individuality and life. Self- realization was created by desire. The
goal was to have no desires, so I wanted to burn the bridge of logic
that connected me to the past, to the world around me, and to the
future that eluded me. Satan's promise was called the light within,
but it was really darkness. It was a false promise based on rejection
of God and the rejection of self. It was a journey through the world
of demons, and into the void of nothingness and Nirvana.
My goal was to lead the life of a zombie. A walking dead man. What a deception I was in. Satan offered me power in the form of sorcery. Through emptying my mind, I could be all powerful. That was a lie. It was just making room for more demons to come in and work through me. I thought I had power, but I was a puppet of the devil. Satan was holding out death as the ultimate reality. Sorcery was the worship of death.
___________
Dust in
the Wind, everything is dust in the wind 1
I wanted to
drift wherever the winds of fate would blow me, leaving behind common
society, with all of its arrangements of substance, time, space, and
energy. What was my goal? Nothing, literally nothing. I didn't know
the answer, so I figured that the answer was that there was no question.
I studied
witchcraft in books like Jeannie
Rose's Herbal,
and
Carlos Castaneda's
tales of Yaqui sorcery, coupled with the music of The
Eagles.
New Year's eve was coming up again. I read that if I burned the herb dragon's blood in a window from St. John's Eve through New Year's Eve, my lover would come and stay with me. I called herb shops in search of dragon's blood. I finally located it at a psychic shop in South Dallas. I drove out to the shop to get some. There was a gold Cadillac parked in front, and bars on the windows of the shop. I walked in the door and asked, "Do you have any Dragon's Blood?" I saw a man burning some herbs and I asked him, "What are you burning?" He held up a red cardboard box and said, "POWER." I was thrown back by the spirit in his voice. I asked him again, "What did you say?" This time, a young woman came in from behind a curtain, and they both said in unison, "POWER!" I asked again and Lucea, a tall dark woman with a crescent around her neck came out and the three of them chanted "POWER !!!" I saw they were a coven of witches, and that I was courting some heavy power. I made a quick exit from their store without getting my dragon's blood.
__________
Barbara and I
had our last New Year's Party together at our house December 31,
1975. I had made up some invitations that had a Yin-Yang world with
an Eagle on the top, and it said, "Welcome to the Split, BYOB or
whatever." I was talking about the split between the years, but
I was foretelling the split-up of our marriage.
The Christmas
tree in the house was a dead mesquite branch with mirrors hanging on
it. In the garage I had a fresh-cut cedar tree in a pot of dirt. I
expected it to stay alive. I had all natural stuff in the garage.
That was my domain. The garage was dark except for the flame in a gas
heater and the glow of joints as I smoked Marijuana with some friends.
I hung
mistletoe on the doors to keep the witches out, but Margaret was
already there. I was wearing a gold and sapphire ring because it was
supposed to give protection against witchcraft. Margaret said. "
I know that you are under some heavy spell. Let me wear your sapphire
ring, and I will put some power in it for you." I was afraid of
her but I was stoned so I gave it to her to wear.
The morning
after the party, I sold all my guns. It was probably a good thing
that I did, because I was getting dangerous.
Barbara was
having bad pain and bleeding from an ovarian cyst. While Barbara was
out, I received a phone call from someone who said he was her doctor.
I told him how much she was bleeding and he said it's nothing to be
concerned with. I believed that the sickness was being caused by a
witch's spell, and that the witches were trying to kill her. Barbara
went to the hospital and had the cyst removed.
I went back to
talk to Lucea at her psychic shop. She remembered me and asked,
"Do you want me to do a reading for you?" I said,
"Sure." Then she did a Tarot reading for me and she advised
me, "You need to stay in control." I bought some I-Ching
Cards and coins for guidance. She said, "Your lover wants to
know how serious you are about wanting to live with her. If you want
her to move out from her husband and live with you, You will have to
move out of your home first, away from your wife and kids and show
her that you mean business."
After Barbara recovered from her illness, we discussed splitting up. We were sad about what had happened to our lives, but we were both believed that breaking up was inevitable. We really didn't know each other anymore. Perhaps we never did. Barbara said, "The Best of My Love, by the Eagles is my song to you, Ron. Maybe some day we'll sit in our rocking chairs when we get old and reflect back on these times."
"When one
takes part in the battle between good and evil, if one side is
destroyed, the other also perishes." 1
Insanity
wasn't something that "happened" to me. I didn't just
become insane. I sought insanity. I worked hard to get there. It had
been my goal.
I was
beginning to read the Bible, but I was trying to have it confirm my
fantasies. I read about the prophet, Ezekiel, and believed that I
should imitate his actions, because I had a destiny like his.
I believed
that I was a prophet who would save the Jews and the Catholics. I
didn't know from what. I believed that Bob Dylan, Pure Prairie
League, Michael Murphy, The Eagles, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, and
other musicians were all prophets who were farther along on the same
spiritual journey I was on, and they were giving me prophetic
messages to help me on my quest. I picked up a pamphlet called The
Ultimate Trip
published by The
Children of God.
I thought it was foretelling my life of romance. I wore a mood ring
and believed that I could keep the perfect mood of "Royal
Blue" by eating certain foods.
I heard that
topaz was a good gem to have for psychic power. I called around and
located a large stone in a jewelry store in downtown Dallas. The
store wasn't far away, so I walked there during lunch hour one day.
The door hit little bell as I walked in, and an old Jewish man came
in from the back room. He took the stone out of the case and set it
on the counter for me to see. It was really beautiful. He look up at
me and said, "It is a very special stone." I believed he
was secretly telling me that he knew about my deliverance mission,
and that the stone had very special powers that I would need for my
mission. I paid for the stone, thanked him and returned to work,
staring at the sun through the facets of the stone trying to absorb power.
The next week,
I took a business trip to Atlanta with some of the guys from the
office. At the Atlanta airport, I saw a display of rings and noticed
a particular ring that had a broken topaz stone in it. The stone was
exactly the same size as my topaz. I considered it an omen that I
found the ring.
The man I
bought it from was also Jewish, and I felt the same way about him as
I did about the man I bought the stone from in Dallas. It excited me.
It was as if people were planted along my path, waiting for me, to
help me along in my quest. I bought the ring, put my stone in it, and
we got the rent car and headed for a factory that was building some
cabinets for our Nuclear Power Plant controls.
We completed
our work, and went back to the airport. On the flight back to Dallas
from Atlanta, the flight stewardess gave me a napkin with a small
anchor printed on it. I knew that the anchor represented hope so I
took it as a sign. My ego and feeling of self- importance was
becoming so inflated that I thought everyone was giving me messages
and clues about my destiny.
I didn't go
home after we landed in Dallas. I drove around aimlessly looking for
more clues. As I drove down Harry Hines Blvd., I came across a motel
named The
Anchor Inn.
I drove into the parking lot and turned off the engine of my Triumph
TR4 sports car. I just sat there staring at the large
"Anchor" sign, believing it was confirmation that I was on
track for my special mission.
I believed
there were energy centers around the world, and that there was a
balance of power and flows of power from these energy centers. I
thought these energy centers controlled people's moods. The huge
granite mass at Stone Mountain Georgia was a polar opposite of the
subway system of New York City because of all the rock that had been
removed from the New York underground. I thought that was why the
people in Georgia were happy and the people in New York City seemed
depressed. I also thought that there was mood power in the bricks of
buildings and a large concentration of power at White Rock Lake. I
thought maybe it could be detected with a Geiger counter, so I
borrowed one from work the next day to check it out.
I was on an
insatiable search for power. In January 1976 I decided to go on a
two-week fast of brown rice, ginseng and Fo Ti Ting herbs. Along with
this, I was drinking alcohol heavily. I drank stronger and stronger
drinks to the point that I was drinking Everclear straight. I thought
that if I would lose weight back to the point I was before I got
married, things would be the way they were back then. I wanted to
start all over again and re-live my life, but didn't know how.
Take my
hand and lead me to the hole in your garden wall and pull me through.2
I wanted to
return to Edenic simplicity and freedom of thought. I was driven by
movies and songs. I was trying to dig my way back through the garden
wall past the angel with the flaming sword, and start again in Eden.
I thought there was a secret somewhere, and I was bound and
determined to discover it.
It's such
a clever innocence with which you do your sorcery.3
I wanted the
story of my life to change so badly that I crossed over from reality
to the isle of fantasy. The magic was so heavy that I constantly
guided my life through omens. It reached the point that I believed
that the entire system of television, radio, and billboards were
composed for my benefit. I interpreted what they said as messages to
me telling me what I should do. I was convinced that the writers of
songs and the announcers on radio and TV were directing their
comments to me personally. The whole media was set up to guide and
enlighten people and it was my turn.
It was kind of a backwards thing from the movies. In movies, unseen orchestras played music that injected additional depth. They added meaning and mood to the plot, animating the otherwise ordinary pictures of life. I took the musicians and media people to be the script writers of my life, and I followed their lead. The drugs I was using, and the spirits I was following fabricated this type of sorcery.
__________
Shanda was a
Tai Chi dancer. She was the most mysterious person I have ever known.
We were just friends, and never had a sexual relationship even though
we were strongly attracted to each other. We were both on the higher
consciousness spiritual power trip, and spent a lot of time together
talking about the establishment and about power.
One night we
went to see some of her friends, a motorcycle gang. They were sitting
around in the kitchen overhauling a Harley engine on the kitchen
table. I was talking to the leader of the gang who they called
"Doc." I noticed my topaz had come loose in its setting.
One of the guys there set the stone in the ring for me. I talked to
them about Barbara, smoked something with them, sat on a step and
cried, and cried, and cried.
Shanda and I
left the motorcycle gang and I took her home. I went in her house,
had a drink with her dad, and then I drove over to the Cathedral de
Guadeloupe in downtown Dallas. I parked my car, and went inside.
It was very much like the churches I had gone to as a child. Light filtered down into its dark interior through colorful images of stained glass. The church was populated with painted statues of dead saints, and a crucifix of Jesus hanging dead on a cross above the altar. A candle continually flickered inside a ruby red glass fixture that hung from the ceiling. The smell of candle smoke and incense lingered in the air from the last Mass.
_________
I recalled
entering churches like this as a child. I would walk in, dip my hand
in holy water, make the sign of the cross, go to a statue of Mary,
and kneel on a cushioned kneeler that was covered in purple velvet.
Before me would be a wrought iron rack filled with votive candles in
little glass candle holders. Some of the candles would be almost
burned out, their wicks barely glowing in the melted wax, and their
glass holders charred with soot. Some candles had been recently lit,
some were unused. I would light a new candle and drop a coin in the
gray metal box, then look up to the statue and begin to pray.
The face on the statue would look down at me with an unchanging cold gaze. I'd pray about all my problems and concerns, but her face did not change. I hoped that somehow Mary would make my request known to God before the candle burned away. But my prayers never gave me relief. I was always left with a feeling of uncertainty.
That was many
years ago. Now I walked up to a statue of a Pieta, a statue of Mary
holding the dead body of Jesus. I looked up into the stone-cold
alabaster face and said, "I'm being crucified like Jesus."
I turned,
walked out of the church, my footsteps echoing off the high, domed
ceilings as I made my way to the exit. Then I pushed open the heavy
wood door and walked out into the still night.
After leaving
the Cathedral, I stopped at a pay phone and called my mother, who
lived on the outskirts of New Orleans. I told her, " I am Jesus
Christ." She said, "No, you're not Jesus Christ." I
was an Antichrist.
I drove around
half the night, following lights and colors, until I found an
apartment sign with rainbows. It was on the north shore of Bachman
Lake. I went to the manager's office. He was still up, so I rented an apartment.
Cats in
the Cradle 1
The next day,
I went to see Jeff and Gavin. I told them I was moving out of the
house. Jeff was laying on his bed, and I sat next to him. He cried,
and cried and said, "You can't leave, you can't leave us."
I was blind and heartless. I got up, gathered up some of my things,
and walked out leaving Jeff and Gavin behind.
On the way to
my apartment, I stopped at a convenience store. There was a man
leaning up against his car in the parking lot. I walked up to him and
gave him a marijuana plant I had grown in a pot with a sun on it. I
also gave him a loaf of bread I had made from a recipe in the book of
Ezekiel in the Bible. Then I asked him if he wanted my car. He said
"You'd better keep it, you may need it."
I went to a
pay phone and called Elvira. I told her that I had moved out. I told
her where my apartment was. She was shocked in unbelief. She liked
the arrangement of us both being married. She found safety in her
"goal free" arrangement. "The best of both
worlds", "a taste of honey", she would say, and she
didn't want that to change. 2
After I got to
the apartment, I brought my things upstairs then walked around
meeting my neighbors and talking with some of them until it started
getting dark
I went to my
car and hit the streets again. After driving for a few hours
following omens, I stopped to get some barbecue. This was unusual for
me, since I was a vegetarian. Something strange happened to me. I
thought there was voodoo magic in the barbecue ribs I had eaten.
For many
years, I had a premonition that I would die at thirty-six years old.
Now I believed I had to magically cut a year out of my life or I
would die. I was smoking Kool cigarettes. I looked down at my gas
gauge. It was on empty, but the car was still running. I was
convinced that the power of smoking the Kool cigarettes was what was
keeping the car going. I believed that if could get to my apartment
by a predetermined time and before the car stopped, I would beat my
appointment with death. My cigarettes ran out, and my car stopped
running on Northwest Highway by the Frenchman's Creek apartments. I
got out of the car and began pushing it down the road. I thought I
had died, and now I was invisible because the police would drive by
and didn't stop to help me.
A Jesus Freak
in a pick-up truck stopped to offer me assistance. He kept telling me
about Jesus, which was strange to me, because I thought I was Jesus.
He drove me to a gas station. They didn't have a container to put gas
in, so he brought me back to my apartment. I had a bottle of
Everclear but he said, "They wouldn't put gas in that." I
asked him to take me back to my car and I poured the Everclear into
the gas tank. The car started and I drove back to the apartment. The
car ran out of juice about a block from the apartment, so I poured a
small bottle of bourbon in the tank and went on. It made it to the
driveway of the apartment and a policeman helped me push my car back
into the parking lot. I thought that I had re-incarnated and was
alive again because a policeman had stopped to help me.
I went up the
stairs and sat on the floor, ready for transformation. I spent the
night doing an "I Ching" mandala using pictures from the
book "Seed," an occult book made for the purpose of doing
mandalas. I arranged the pictures on the floor, fitting them together
as puzzle pieces representing the events of my life. I put a picture
of the "Sacred heart of Jesus" in the center and I wept
bitterly thinking about my children and my shattered family. 3
I made I-Ching
Hexagrams until I arrived at the number "8". Then I got up,
opened the door, nailed the Tarot card Temperance
onto the outside of the door as a reminder to me of my unfinished
Karma, then I came back inside and fell asleep.
When I awoke I
was "Enlightened." A voice within me said, "You will
never die. You are an eternal being who has finally joined the human
race." This was the full realization of my human spirit. I
thought that I was beyond destruction. I had achieved my goal, the
search was over. I had become totally insane. I had the power, but
where was Love?
The sun was
bright, the plants waved in the breeze, and the birds soared. I felt
alive and fresh for the first time that I could remember. The streets
were like ribbons flowing through a fantasy land. I would close my
eyes and drive through street intersections believing that it was all
in control of fate and if it wasn't my time to transcend this life,
there would be no accidents. I was euphoric, having delusions of
grandeur, and thought I was immortal and invincible.
I drove over
to see Barbara. I had a portable cassette player hanging from my
shoulder. I'd play tapes and use them as an instrument of hypnotism
and sorcery. I'd play a tape, stare at someone, and think about how I
thought the words of the song applied to them. They would think the
thoughts I was projecting and freak out. I was playing a Dylan Song
or Eagles song, maybe Lying
Eyes,
and stood before Barbara sending her a thought about a person she
knew. She was shocked and cried out "How did you know?"
I walked out
the house and went down the street to see Ginger. She looked at me
with concern in her eyes and said, "You have a death wish."
She gave me a diamond ring to wear. I put it on my finger wearing it
like a knight flying his lady's colors.
I jumped into
my car and went to Elvira's house. I felt faint and lay down on her
bed. Velvet tunnels of darkness engulfed me. The song Amy
drifted though my mind. I felt I was melting and merging with the
infinite. Shells of consciousness peeled off one after another until
nothing was left but the void. I thought I had died and attained
Nirvana, which Buddhists believe is beyond the circle of birth and
death. But I came back and regained consciousness. I thought it was
because I had some more Karma to work off.
Elvira called
Barbara and told her what was happening. As she talked to Barbara,
Paul sat on the side of the bed, buttoning the sleeve of his denim
shirt. The shirt had an embroidered star on the cuff. I thought Paul
had already died too and was on another life, burning off Karma. I
thought he was giving me a signal telling me that he understood what
had happened to me.
Barbara came
over, and she and Elvira told me I needed to go and have a
psychiatric examination. I went along with their idea, I thought it
might be fun. The weather was nice and sunny as we drove to Parkland
Hospital. We went to the psychiatric ward. I talked with the shrink
while Barbara was nervously telling him that I was always taking
notes. She went down the hall to use the phone.
Paul, Elvira,
and I went into a room called the "Family Room." I thought
that meant that Elvira and I were going to be Family. Paul was
grinning and laughing and I was bumming cigarettes off of him. I
thought that he knew that it was time for Elvira to leave him and
come live with me and was laughing because Elvira didn't know what
was going on because she hadn't died yet.
From there we
went to Presbyterian Hospital where I signed a form agreeing to a
two-week evaluation. The form asked me what my religion was, I put
Taoist. I thought it was a game to get Barbara committed because I
thought she was the one who was really crazy.
Elvira, Paul,
and Barbara left and the nurse gave me some medication. I walked the
halls trying to pick up some psychic sign on how to get out of the
building. The nurse smiled at me and said, "your psychic stuff
doesn't work here, the doors are locked."
The shrink
assigned to me was a very large, bearded man with graying hair. I
called him King Tut. I sat next to him looking at his face and
glasses. He asked me, "How do you feel?" My vision started
changing, there was a foggy glow about his face and I started to feel
withdrawn. I asked him, "Are you trying to hypnotize me?"
He said, "No, that wouldn't be fair." I was convinced that
it was just a big game.
He had my
mother and dad come from New Orleans so he could interview them in
the hospital. He blamed my mother for my condition. That upset her a
lot and made her feel guilty and bad. He told her he didn't know if I
would recover. He said I would be either a lot better, or a lot worse.
My parents
were not to blame. Tut was just pushing one of the impersonal,
heartless, psychological theories. He asked me questions about my
past, and when I would answer he'd respond with comments like
"Dealing with Barbara is like dealing with the whole Catholic
Church, isn't it." I wasn't sure what he meant by that. Nothing
he said had meaning in it at all. He was just trying to be a psychic
mirror. He treated me in a godless manner with psychotherapy, mind
games, guided imagery, and associative thinking.
Elvira visited
me every day in the hospital. Some of my other friends and some of my
associates from work came to see me a couple of times. I didn't want
to see Barbara.
I agreed with
the other patients that it was good for us to be locked up as scape
goats for the sake of our friends and families. We could take it.
Those outside could believe that because we were locked up, we were
crazy, so they must be sane. Then after we were released, they would
believe that everyone was sane. We knew that everyone outside was
crazy, we were the sane ones. We just humored everyone else. Tut had
me on Thorazine and Stellazine. These anti-psychotic drugs pretty
well ripped out all the mission, vision, and emotion from me and the
others that were taking it. Some of the "guests" were given
shock therapy. One lady kept raising her arms into the air saying,
"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus" over and over again. I wondered why
she did that. Now I know.
We would pick
our menu each day. I thought they were even evaluating me by what I
was eating or not eating. I was a vegetarian and so didn't want to
eat the meat because I believed it would take me down off my high
mission. Some of the items on the tray were covered in plastic. I
took that as a sign that I wasn't supposed to eat them.
The orderlies
would shine a flashlight in my face at night to see if I was
sleeping. I couldn't stay in my room during the daytime. I had to be
in the community room with the rest of the guests of the zoo.
A guard took
me to another building for some dental work. I spotted a coleus plant
at the dentist's office so I took some leaves off a plant and kept it
later to smoke because I had read that coleus was a mild hallucinogen.
I made friends
with a patient, Diana, who said she was a bastard daughter of
Mussolini. She said Mussolini was still alive, and so were JFK and
LBJ. She said she and her friend El Capitan, the head of her
organization, dined with them from time to time. She said that I was
a reincarnation of Robert E. Lee.
My roommate
Tim was very depressed. He hanged himself in our room with his belt.
King Tut asked me how I felt about Tim's death. I said, "At
least he got out."
King Tut used
autosuggestion, dream interpretation, and Freudian analysis to try to
reprogram me to where I was before all the crazy stuff happened. I
didn't want to go back. I wanted to enjoy the consciousness that I
had achieved. That wasn't in the cards. Tut didn't want to be a
person to me. He wanted to bounce back my thoughts at me with his
twist and aberration on them. He didn't want to talk about himself,
only about me. No matter how hard I tried, I could never get him to
be a person. After the two-week period was over. I wrote a letter
saying that I wanted out. They took my razor away from me. I had to
ask for it and they would watch me as I shaved. They said I was
suicidal and they were afraid that I would kill myself. They were
probably afraid I might take the blade, hide it, and cut someone up.
They said that if I insisted on being released, Barbara would have me
court committed to the State Hospital for The Insane at Terrill. I
knew I didn't want that, so I cooperated and let them do their stuff
and drain me dry so they could consider me sane enough to be released
to the world again.
I stayed there
three months, thinking each day that I would get out and resume my
journey and mission. I stood at the window waiting to get out,
looking at the birds flying, and the grass growing as spring came along.
When I finally
got out, I was never the same. The powerful drugs they had used on me
gave me a chemical lobotomy and stripped me of both reality and
unreality. I could not think.
My delusions
of grandeur were gone. Before the Thorazine, I had experienced a
taste of Satan's power. New Age and Eastern Religion books described
that experience. I had experienced it, but now it was gone!
Everything was
so depressing. I tried to get back to where I was before Thorazine,
but couldn't do it. When I entered the Funny Farm, I didn't care what
anybody said. I "knew" their opinions were useless and that
fate was in control of all of us. I had laughed at the people who
were concerned about me. I just thought about how small and shallow
their world was, and how much higher mine was. I was so proud, so
full of the devil, so exalted in my mind and spirit. But now I was
back in their lowly, boring world, crawling like a worm. Fate had
played a trick on me.
I hated
Barbara and Tut for busting my bubble and taking me down. I resented
them for years. Looking back now, I see that I was very dangerous,
and was walking the same path that Charles Manson did. Manson thought
the Beatles were giving him instructions through their music. If
Barbara and Tut had not intervened, I probably would have ended up
like Manson. 1
I moved back
into my apartment, but Tut insisted that I go back home, so I did. I
was depressed all the time, and didn't have a place to meet Elvira.
After a couple of weeks, I moved to another apartment. I was still on
Thorazine, and I went to see Tut once a week as an outpatient. He
said that the medication was my only insurance to stay out of the
hospital. I went along with his game because I surely didn't want to
go back and be locked up again.
I kept
pressuring Elvira to leave Paul and live with me. She said, "Give
me time, my girls still need me." I was consumed with hatred
because things didn't work out like I planned. I was angry because
she had told Tut that she would never leave Paul. So in the back of
my mind, I knew there was no future with her, but my fantasy kept me
going on with her. The thrill was gone. My affair with Elvira had no
more excitement. The fantasy was only a memory. I continued going
through the motions with her, hoping the feelings would return to
what they had been before my chemical lobotomy.
My impatience
with Elvira grew as I tired of waiting for her to "be mine."
I started drifting away from her and started looking for the
fulfillment of my fantasy in other women.
That had
really started before the funny farm. I expected Elvira to move in
with me right away when I had moved out and had gotten an apartment.
That's what the fortune teller had said would happen - but it hadn't.
I started wondering if there was going to be another soul mate to
fulfil my fantasy, I thought it may be Shanda, but she didn't care
about me, she was aloof and never visited me when I was in the Asylum.
One day on the
way to see King Tut, my car broke down. The ignition coil had gone
bad. Jim, the leader of a singles' group at a church in Dallas,
stopped to help me. He gave me a ride to the parts house and took me
back to my car. He replaced the coil for me and I followed him to his apartment.
He was telling
me about his church and how he was living with his girlfriend. That
reminded me of a guy I had met in college. The guy was always
bragging about having sex with many girls on campus. I had told him,
"That's fornication, and it is a sin. He said, " Yea, I
know it is a sin, but it doesn't matter if I sin, because I'm
Saved." I didn't want to have anything to do with that guy's
religion. Jim's actions were saying the same thing. I knew deep
inside that I was committing sin with my adultery; but I wasn't
trying to justify it in the name of some religious belief.
Jim invited me
to go to his singles' group at his church. After what he told me
about his sex life, I didn't want to have anything to do with his
religion or his church, but I thought the single's group might be
interesting. Maybe I would meet someone there. I went to the group
the next Sunday morning. The girl who led the group with Jim was
wearing a see-through blouse with no bra. The place was just a
"meat market," a place to pick someone up, and all in the
name of religion. They told me I couldn't join their group because I
was still married. I was still officially married to Barbara but we
had been living a divorced life for many years before that. We had
estranged ourselves from each other. I had tried to find happiness in
other relationships, but never found it. I was just living a life of desperation.
I went to a
Halloween party at Jim's church. I wore a satin gold star and
crescent on a black velvet cape and carried Sake to drink. There I
met Julie. I told Julie that she may become my wife. I told her about
my mental problems. She knew about Thorazine and said that she better
beware of me. The next week, I went over to her apartment and took
her out on a picnic. As I was trying to put the make on her, she
asked me about my children and how often I saw them. She would have
been a good friend, but I was not interested in friendships. I wasn't
interested in my family. I was still searching for the pot of gold at
the end of my romance fantasy rainbow.
The church
group was going to New Braunfelds to the Oktoberfest beer bust. While
I was waiting to get on the bus, I spotted a girl looking at me from
across the parking lot. She was Joan. We introduced ourselves and
rode together to New Braunfelds. The bus was stocked with beer and we
were all drunk when we got there.
After we
returned, we began dating. Someone had given Joan a Bible tract about
Eternal Life. She gave the tract to me. I looked through it and
decided I already had eternal life because I was an occult master. I
threw the tract away. Joan and I talked of getting married and were
going to go to New Orleans to meet my Mom and Dad for Thanksgiving
holiday. Her mother was suspicious of me and told Joan, "Don't
get serious with Ron. He's going to go back to Elvira." The week
before our trip, Joan and I smoked some dope. As I looked at Joan's
face, it changed into my face. I had a flashback to the Elvira affair
and broke up with Joan. I told her I wanted to date other people.
Joan's mother was right.
I went to New
Orleans to visit my parents. My mother saw that I was miserable. She
tried to cheer me up, but I told her, "I'll never be happy again."
After that, I
had a fling for a couple of weeks with a disco girl who lived in my
apartment complex fantasizing that she may be my deliverer. Nothing
satisfied me.
Here come
those tears again just when I was getting over you, just when I was
going to make it through another night without missing you 2
I would be
relieved every time I broke away from Elvira, but it never lasted. I
went from one affair to another trying to get free from Elvira, but I
kept having flashbacks into my fantasy world and we would get back
together again.
I was so
messed up on drugs, legal and otherwise, that I could not concentrate
enough to be a responsible worker. And the depression! The thought of
a simple task such as changing the fuse in a car was overwhelming to
me. I tried to think of what kind of job I could do. I figured maybe
I could handle trimming shrubs, that was about it. I knew that I
wasn't pulling my weight in the job I had. The company was just
keeping me on until I got better. I will always be grateful to them
for their great patience with me as I recovered.
Early in 1977,
I started listening to preachers on the radio. Burt Albritton was
teaching out of the book of Job. I could identify with Job. He had
lost everything. I had lost everything, including my mind.
A radio
preacher, Virgil Barnes, got my attention. After talking with him on
the phone, I went his church, The
Spirit Filled Baptist Church in
Grand Prairie. He and his church family were very nice to me. His
daughters were beautiful and happy, and his son-in-law had stopped
using Marijuana. I wanted to stop, too. I was impressed with these
people. I wanted a wife like his daughter. I asked God to give me a
wife who was filled with the Holy Spirit.
One Sunday,
Virgil asked me if I would give a preacher from India a ride to Word
of Faith Church. As I gave him the ride, I told him about my
spiritual experiences and visions. He smiled and said, "What you
experienced was a false heaven. The real heaven would be permanent.
Jesus is coming back to take His believers to be with Him there and
it will be much grander than anything you have experienced." He
said, "Jesus Loves you and shed His Blood for you. He wants to
change your life."
I went to Word
of Faith for a while, listened to Bob Tilton teach. He was teaching
out of Deuteronomy:
Behold, I set
before you this day a blessing and a curse; A blessing, if ye obey
the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you this day:
And a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of The LORD your
God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day, to
go after other gods, which ye have not known. 3
I was reaping
the consequences for my actions. I didn't like the way my life was
going, and wanted to know why it was so messed up. The occult and New
Age books didn't have the answer. They taught sowing and reaping, but
it was all in control of Karma and Fate. The only escape was the
permanent death of Nirvana.
God was
starting to speak to me through the Bible but Satan didn't want to
let me go. The war was on. I had been really into The
Eagles
music group. I heard
New Kid in Town, a
cut from their new album
Hotel California
on the radio in February 1997. In my inflated ego and insanity, I
thought the song was it was about me and took the message to mean
that I should continue my affair with Elvira.
I went to a
prayer and praise group at a Lutheran church that Barbara and I used
to attend. Ray, the leader of the group, said he had been praying for
me for seven years. I was impressed with that, but I wasn't ready to
come to God.
I was reading
the Bible, looking for relief from my depression. As I read more and
more, the Bible started speaking to me about my affairs, but I kept
on doing them. I went to a nearby Baptist Church for some Bible
study. A Christian man named Dwayne Weaver called on me from a
visitor's card I had filled out. We became friends. He kept telling
me of his personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and how he and
Jesus loved me. I didn't know what he meant, but I was sure that he
believed it. His devotion to Jesus and his honest love for me made a
great impression on me so I went to church with him for a while.
Elvira wanted
to go to church with me. I asked Pastor Barnes what he thought and he
said " Don't be fooled, Elvira is not interested in church,
she's just using that as an excuse to be with you again." I
didn't believe him and it made me mad, but it turned out that he was right.
I was back
with Elvira. Dwayne kept telling me I should break up with her,
because what I was doing was wrong. He said it in such a loving way
that I knew he cared for me. Things he said to me didn't offend me.
In the back of my mind, I began to wonder if he was right about my
affairs, but I didn't want to stop because I was still reaching for
the golden ring of fantasy.
I met Dwayne's
friend, Carol, who did paintings of cats and tigers. She was in the
Bahai religion. Carol knew some martial arts fanatics. I hung around
them for a while. They were expecting a space ship to come and get
them. I bought a .45 automatic pistol, filed it to a hair trigger and
kept it stuck inside my belt loaded with silver hollow points in case
I ran across a vampire some night.
Finally King
Tut transferred me to the Dallas Mental Health and Retardation
Center. It was a free service. The shrink there said, "I know
what's wrong with you; someone slipped you some acid. You are a
manic-depressive. I'm putting you on Lithium." Like all shrinks,
he dealt in the chemical and the psychological, and not in the
spiritual. The spiritual was where my problems were and they had to
be dealt with spiritually.
I nearly had a
heart attack from improperly administered lithium mood stabilizers.
On one visit to the shrink, his nurse took my blood pressure. She
said I had heart problems and needed to see a cardiologist. I read up
on Lithium in a drug book. The book said the effective dose was very
close to the lethal dose so my blood level had to be monitored. The
shrink had almost killed me because he did not check my blood level.
I confronted him. I said "You are killing me with this drug.
Read here what the book says about Lithium." He laughed at me
and said, " I know what the books say, I can tell your mental
condition by looking at you." I said "Maybe, but not my
physical condition." It made me wonder who really was crazy. His
receptionist told me, "Get off the Lithium and take herbs."
I left the place.
I got a card
in the mail from The
Church of Scientology
asking, "Do you think you can change?" I wanted to change
so I went to one of their introductory meetings. They said they
couldn't treat me as long as I was on psychiatric medication. I
wanted to know what meaning my life had, even as crazy as it was. I
wasn't going to find it on Thorazine or Lithium, or in Scientology. I
asked God to help me and threw away all the drugs and went cold
turkey off the stuff.
Now
there's a world of illusion and fantasy, in the place where the real
world belongs. Now I look for the beauty in songs to fill my head and
lead me on, though my dreams have come up torn and empty as many
times as love has come and gone. 4
I was a
miserable human being, trying to work out a deal with Elvira that she
would live with me for a few months, and live with Paul for a few months.
One day, in
February 1977, I sat on the steps of my apartment thinking of the
utterly hopeless mess I had made of my life, and the bondage I was
in. I was a kept man. Elvira had another life. She didn't want to
share life with me. I thought, "For the past four years, I've
been running wild, my marriage, my career, and my family are all
ruined. All because of my fantasy over Elvira. It's all over. I'll
never have a life again, never be happy again." I was a slave to
adultery, to my affair with Elvira, a slave to sin. Adultery had not
made me happy. I was sick and perverted and asked God to kill me.
Then I met
Hank. He was from Chicago, and lived two doors down from me. He
introduced me to a girl who called herself Gypsy. She lived in the
apartment below Hank. Gypsy was a histologist at Methodist hospital
in Oak Cliff. Hank was trying to put the make on her, but she wasn't
interested. I spent the winter doing things with them. Hank and I
hung out together and smoked hashish, but it didn't get me high. I
began to talk more to Gypsy. After witnessing a scene I had with
Elvira, Gypsy said she'd help me forget Elvira. Gypsy was different,
a quiet, pensive lady with deep, simple thoughts. She longed to get
back to South Dakota and be with her daughter, Holly. I never asked
about her past. We enjoyed sitting around drinking coffee or tequila,
or smoking a joint, or reading tea leaves.
She moved to a
room in Oak Cliff to be closer to her work. After getting off work in
downtown Dallas, I'd go to her apartment, spend the night with her,
and go to work from there in the morning.
We went to
Mardi Gras in the Spring of "78." On the way, I went to my
grandmother's funeral, we drove through the back roads of the
swamplands to get to new Orleans. On the way back, we went to Avery
Island and the Japanese gardens there. We walked along listening to
the wind whispering through the bamboo. She wasn't entertainment
oriented like the women I dated before. She was natural. She was nice
being with.
Someone gave
me a paperback book called The
Jesus-Person Promises Book.
It made sense to me. On the advice of my boss, Bob, I went to a
Christian Counselor for help. The counselor said that I was abandoned
as a child because my parents made me go to my room when I was bad.
That made me cry. He asked me what I wanted from him. I explained
that I was having an affair with Elvira and couldn't decide what I
should do, continue my affair or try to go back to Barbara. I
expected him to give me a straight answer from the Bible, but
instead, he just said that I had deep problems and it would take a
lot of treatment for me to get well. He wouldn't answer my question.
I told Gypsy
that we should stop having sex. She was ready to go back to South
Dakota so we said our goodbyes and separated as friends.
Hank was
furious with me for taking Gypsy away from him, so I moved to another
apartment complex where Carol lived. She taught me to paint. I went
to the Irving art association meetings with her and Dwayne. She was a
lot of fun. We never got involved romantically. She was very serious
about the Bahai religion. I studied it with her for a while. I was
still into my religion of voodoo, colors, omens and mind control,
trying to work my way back to insanity.
Meanwhile,
Barbara was trying to raise Jeff and Gavin amidst the turmoil we had
created. Jeff and Gavin said that one thing they were glad about was
that Barbara and I weren't battling anymore. They were so sweet to
me, always trying to cheer me up. They were both more mature than I
was at the time. I was a real basket case.
About that
time, Bob left the Utility company and went to work at an engineering
company north of Dallas. I was sorry to see him go. He had cared for
me so much and stuck with me through all my problems. Shortly after
he left, I was laid off from my job.
I tried to get
a job in photography, took my portfolio around to a few places, but
people wanted me to shoot weddings and ballet recitals. I decided
that wasn't for me. I wanted to do artistic work. My brother-in-law
suggested I look into a sales job, so I answered an ad in the
newspaper for a medical equipment salesman. That job had already been
taken, so the employment agency sent me to interview for a job at the
same engineering company where Bob had gone to work. Small world.
After I interviewed his company, they gave me a job writing proposals. I told them everything that had happened to me and the employment director said, "Since you are so comfortable talking about your problems, we believe you are over them." That built my confidence.
__________
Pearl was a
motorcycle mama, and lived in the same apartment complex as I did. I
had been interested in getting a motorcycle for a while, so I bought
one and we rode together. We dated for a while, trying to keep it
clean. We were engaged to be married. By that time, I wanted to stop
my fornication and adultery. We went on a camping trip. Pearl had
brought a joint. We smoked it and had sex. I was angry, disappointed,
and disgusted with myself.
You're
still the same, caught up with you yesterday 5
I agonized
over my messed up mind. Why did I keep on this destructive pattern? I
was powerless against it. I was such a slave to my emotions and my
deranged thoughts. I went into a field and picked up a dirt clod. I
screamed out, "Reality is a mouthful of dirt." Then I ate
the dirt clod. Pearl sensed my distance and started putting me down.
I moved to across town to get away from Elvira. I didn't tell her where I had moved.
I broke the
engagement with Pearl. She figured it was coming.
I started
hanging around with Mike and Shanda again. One day, we were
philosophizing about the atomic structure of our bodies. Mike said
some people can walk through walls because they know how to align the
vibrations. I said I could pass my hand through the table. Mike said
try it. I was afraid my hand would get stuck halfway through. Our
life was a huge joke. We said love was the answer, but we were more
concerned about convincing ourselves that we had a higher
consciousness than most other people, so that we could believe we
were on the road to enlightenment and godhood. We didn't care about
anyone but ourselves. We were proud and knew nothing about love.
__________
Before Gypsy
left for South Dakota, she had given me a book about Theosophy, an
occult religious group that followed the Ancient Mysteries of Isis
and other Egyptian religions along with Buddhism. The core teaching
of their group was evolution. I went to The
Constellation,
an Occult book store in Dallas, and took some courses in
The Kabala,
Magnetic Healing, Self Hypnotism, and Esoteric Astrology. A girl in
one of my classes introduced me to the Theosophy Society and I
studied under them and other occult metaphysical groups trying to
find out what had happened to me, but the answer was not there. The
people in these organizations were religious fools who had academic
knowledge of the Occult but were not Occult Masters like I was.
They were
trying to reach occult experiences through their intellectual
pursuits. They were simply documenting the experiences that had
happened to other people
I saw though the double talk and contradictions in their teachings. They said that all Holy Books such as the Bible, the Koran, The Hindu and Buddhist scriptures all had the same message in them. I was told that I should pick a master, or a couple of masters to entreat for spiritual power. I ordered a couple of portraits for my apartment; one was Conte de St. Germain and one was The Master Jesus. They said Jesus was part of the hierarchy but no longer as the Christ. I read in the Bible that no man can serve two masters, so I canceled my order and left the organization. God was beginning to open my eyes to the Truth of the Bible. 6
__________
Gems were some
of the things I used in my sorcery. I carried 50 carats of amethyst
crystals in a bag to keep me connected to the violet ray of
ceremonial magic. One of the books I studied the Occult called The
Science of the Sacraments.
It was a teaching on the spiritual powers and thought forms
generated by the gems and relics used in Catholicism. That led me to
look into the Catholic Church again. I went to a priest, made a
general confession, took communion, and began attending their study group.
__________
While I sat in
the room, listening to the teacher of the group, I thought about why
I had left the Catholic Church. It was over the Catholic doctrine
that prohibited eating of meat on Friday. According to the doctrine,
eating meat on Friday was a "Mortal Sin" that would send me
to Hell. But the parish priest at the college told me that there was
an exception to this rule for football players. They were allowed to
eat meat on Friday because they needed it for their strength. I
didn't play on the football team, so I'd go to Hell for that if I
died before I made it to a priest to confess the terrible sin of
eating meat on Friday and not being on the football team.
To that point,
I had tried hard to do all that the Catholic Church told me to do. I
took everything they said seriously and I had trusted them. But when
I saw they had made going to Hell a sports issue and not a moral
issue, I had been crushed. So much for The Pope and the Catholic
Church being infallible, unquestionably right on all religious
matters. I didn't want to have anything more to do with an
organization that boasted of being the champions of truth,
unchangeable and divinely inspired, but would be so arbitrary about
what would send a person to Hell.
That had destroyed my trust in religion. So I had trashed my belief in the church, Satan, Jesus, and God the Father, along with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. I had thrown the baby out with the bathwater. I saw the double-talk and lies, but I didn't see the truth because I had no point of reference to know truth. I just had bitterness and confusion.
__________
I heard the
teacher ask, "Does anyone have any questions?" I raised my
hand and asked, "Why doesn't the Catholic Church teach that
people will go to Hell for eating meat on Friday any more?" He
smiled and explained, "There are liberal and conservative
theological camps within the church, and that one in control at the
time determines the teaching. So the rules keep changing depending on
which group is in power. What you would go to Hell for as a kid may
not apply to you when as an adult."
What he said,
just confirmed the double-talk I had seen in college.
I went home
and studied the Bible some more. I came across the Ten Commandments
in Exodus. I didn't know that the Ten Commandments were in the Bible,
and I had never even wondered how Catholic teachings compared to what
was in the Bible. I thought about the Ten Commandments I had been
taught. When I compared them with the Ten Commandments in the Bible,
I found that Catholicism only teaches nine of the Ten Commandments.
They omitted the second commandment that forbids people to make and
bow down to statues. Every time I had knelt and prayed before a
statue of Mary or some other saint I had unknowingly broken that
commandment, but I didn't know that, because I was not taught the
Bible. 7
But even being
taught the Ten Commandments incorrectly was not really the problem. I
couldn't have gained the love of God by keeping all of the
commandments even if I had known what they were. Keeping the
commandments couldn't change my wayward heart.
I saw that the Catholic Church did not use the Bible as the basis for all their teachings, so I left the Catholic Church it never went back.
_________
I was still very depressed. I wanted to die and leave this world. I thought about suicide a lot. Sometimes I would hypnotize myself and stand in front of the bathroom mirror in my apartment staring at myself trying to disappear. Sometimes I tried to transform myself into what I would be like when I was older. Once I stood staring at my reflection the mirror with my loaded and cocked .45 automatic pistol held to my head, wondering what kind of mess it would make if I would pull the trigger. I didn't do it because I didn't want my family to have to clean up the mess. Satan wanted to kill me before I found Jesus, but God had his hand on me.
__________
I broke down
and brought Elvira to my new apartment. The tension between us was
too strong. Elvira said, "We don't have to have sex, I just want
to be near you." We tried to just be friends but we were soon in
bed again.
Toward the end
of our romance, Elvira tried to make me see that she wasn't the
fantasy princess as I wanted to see her. She identified herself as a
wench wanting to have a good time with everyone. It was like I was
Don Quixote and she was Dulcinera from The
Man of La Mancha. 8
I wrote my
first book La
Morte du Fantaisie.
It was the story of my affair with Elvira. In the story, I turned
cold against her and wanted her out of my life. I gave Elvira a copy.
She got the message but didn't like it. I let my mother read my copy,
then I destroyed it.
I blamed a lot
of my problems on Elvira, making her out to be the villain, but I was
still trying to justify my innocence and goodness. I was still proud.
I wasn't looking for truth. I was looking for pleasure. I received
the delusion because I did not have love of the Truth and didn't want
to turn from my sin and pride. 9
My life in the
fast lane hit a brick wall at Mardi Gras. I was there with Elvira in
New Orleans in the Spring of 1979. I had promised to take her because
I had taken Gypsy the year before. We went to a voodoo museum. To the
tourists, it was only a museum, but it was much more than that. There
were red candles burning, a head of a goat mounted on a wall above a
kneeler, and a large snake in a cage. As we looked at the candles and
tourist trinkets they had for sale, a black-robed voodoo priest came
from the back room. He walked up to me and we exchanged glances of
dark spiritual recognition. I knew then that it was not just a
museum. It was a place of Satanic worship. I bought some candles, and
a voodoo doll that I used later to cast a spell on Elvira, and we
went on our way.
We had just
left a female impersonator bar and were walking down Bourbon Street
when I received a Gospel tract from an unseen hand in the crowd.
I stopped and
read it. It said "If you died right now, while you were reading
this, would you go to Heaven or Hell?" The tract said something
about the blood of Jesus paying the price for our sins. I laughed
because I didn't believe in sin, death, Heaven, or Hell. I thought I
had experienced death and was an enlightened master in the occult. I
laughed, but I didn't throw the tract away.
We drove back
to Dallas the next day. The words of the tract were burning in my
mind. I had to find out where I stood with this God I didn't believe
in. I asked my friends about the tract. They said it was something
about the Bible.
Up to this
point I was just casually reading the Bible. Now I started reading it
more seriously. As I studied the Bible and prayed, God began to speak
to me from the Bible. It was like the words jumped off the page. The
words were directed to me, pointing out my problems, and giving me solutions.
I had tasted
the leading of messages from spirits before when I followed words,
signs, and songs that I thought were directed to me. I was a son of
the devil, and had been following lying spirits, but now I was
beginning to hear from the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Truth,
instead of from the lying spirits of devils.
Throughout the
Bible, Jesus says, "Let those who have ears hear". He
said, "hearing, some might not understand." I had been
deaf and blind. I had eyes that did not see and ears that did not
hear what God had been trying to tell me. But now, God, through His
grace, was beginning to open my eyes and ears. 1
I read out of
the book of Proverbs:
"My son,
attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not
depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For
they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their
flesh. Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the
issues of life. Put away from thee a froward mouth, and perverse lips
put far from thee. Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine
eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet, and
let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to
the left: remove thy foot from evil." 2
It was plain
to me that I needed to sober up, and watch what I was doing. I had
been drifting, following omens, but now I was sensing God's
direction. I read on:
"For the
commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of
instruction are the way of life: To keep thee from the evil woman,
from the flattery of the tongue of a strange woman. Lust not after
her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take thee with her
eyelids. For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece
of bread: and the adulteress will hunt for the precious life. Can a
man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? Can one go
upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned? So he that goeth in to
his neighbour's wife; whosoever toucheth her shall not be innocent.
Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he
is hungry; But if he be found, he shall restore sevenfold; he shall
give all the substance of his house. But whoso committeth adultery
with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his
own soul. A wound and dishonour shall he get; and his reproach shall
not be wiped away." 3
That was
speaking to the heart of the matter. It was obvious that I had no
understanding. I was a fool and I knew it. Then I read something that
portrayed exactly what had happened to me. It made me shudder:
"That
they may keep thee from the strange woman, from the stranger which
flattereth with her words. For at the window of my house I looked
through my casement, And beheld among the simple ones, I discerned
among the youths, a young man void of understanding, Passing through
the street near her corner; and he went the way to her house, In the
twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night: And, behold,
there met him a woman with the attire of an harlot, and subtle of
heart. She is loud and stubborn; her feet abide not in her house: Now
is she without, now in the streets, and lieth in wait at every
corner. So she caught him, and kissed him, and with an impudent face
said unto him, 'I have peace offerings with me; this day have I payed
my vows. Therefore came I forth to meet thee, diligently to seek thy
face, and I have found thee. I have decked my bed with coverings of
tapestry, with carved works, with fine linen of Egypt. I have
perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. Come, let us take
our fill of love until the morning: let us solace ourselves with
loves. For the goodman is not at home, he is gone a long journey: He
hath taken a bag of money with him, and will come home at the day
appointed.' With her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with
the flattering of her lips she forced him.
He goeth after
her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the
correction of the stocks; Till a dart strike through his liver; as a
bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life.
Hearken unto me now therefore, O ye children, and attend to the words
of my mouth. Let not thine heart decline to her ways, go not astray
in her paths. For she hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong
men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down
to the chambers of death. 4
This really
grabbed me. The scene was just like the first time I went to Elvira's
house and started our adultery. The setting was exact. The words were
true and spoke to my heart. The consequences were exactly what had
happened to me. God was talking to me specifically about Elvira and me.
The Sword of
the Spirit, the Word of God, cut through my clouded mind and into my
heart. It was like a small spark of light had began to shine deep
inside my mind. I was convinced that I had to break up with Elvira
for good, and clean up my life so I would go to Heaven and not to Hell.
I was still
heavily into witchcraft. I took the voodoo doll, pronounced it to be
Elvira and pushed the a pin through it's heart.
Elvira took
the breakup hard and tried to kill herself by sitting in a running
car closed up in her garage. Her suicide attempt frightened me. I
burned the voodoo doll.
Elvira and I were living a "Romeo and Juliet" relationship that was based on ourselves and our selfish desires. I didn't want love from Elvira, from God, or from anyone. I was just full of hate. I thought that I was more evil than the devil himself could be.
__________
I had a friend
at work named Ray. He was the one who had invited me to the prayer
and praise group at the Lutheran church. He was like Bob, always
talking about Jesus. This guy had Bible games on his computer and
would invite me to play them to test my knowledge of the scriptures.
It embarrassed me and I thought it was silly, but at the same time, I
was interested in knowing more about what the Bible said.
One day, I
stayed late after work. I was standing alone on the second floor,
looking out the window. It reminded me of the time I stood looking
out of the window of the mental hospital, waiting to be set free. I
had been released from the hospital, but I was not free. I was still
in bondage to sin.
I pondered my
spiritual beliefs. I had studied a lot of religions and "Holy
Books;" Buddhism, Zen, Yoga, Hinduism, Sufism, Taoism, Bahaiism,
Theosophy, Esoteric Astrology, Masonism, and the New Age Secret
doctrines. They all had something in common. They said I was good and
getting better and my problem was either that I was ignorant of my
innate goodness and godhood. They said I had not done enough good
things yet or suffered enough yet to make me holy. These religions
said that I was inherently perfect but just blew it from time to
time. They said that I was really getting better and better but just
didn't realize it. From what I saw of my life, that wasn't true. My
life was getting worse. These religions talked a good talk, but had
no power to change lives. I had waited for the promise they offered,
but it never came. These religions used the Word God, but they are
referring to either an impersonal God of forces, to feelings within,
or to a distorted picture of the true God of the Bible.
I had accepted
what other people said about the Bible, but now that I was reading it
for myself, I saw what God was really saying. It sure was different
from what I had been told it said. I had been told that God was after
me to make me suffer. I found that he was after me, but He was after
me to love me and to save me. I was desperate for answers. I knew I
wasn't holy and I finally wanted to do something about it.
The Holy Bible
stood alone, different from all the rest of the books I had read, and
declared a different and unique message. The picture the Bible
painted about the nature of man seemed to me to be really accurate.
It said that all people are sinners, slaves to sin, bearing fruit of
a bad sinful seed, and that there was nothing man could do himself to
change that situation. It really told the truth about man. All the
other religions painted a false picture of what mankind was like. I
thought, "If the Bible was true about what it said about man, It
could be true about what it says about God."
I believed in
reincarnation. If I was right, nothing really mattered. We'd all go
on the path of reincarnation and evolution. But if I was wrong, and
the Christians were right, I'd split Hell.
I decided to
give God a chance to show me if what the Bible said about Him was
true. What was the gamble if I tried Christianity? If the Christian
thing was false, I wouldn't really be wasting anything; it was all
preordained anyway.
I said: "God, you know I don't believe in you, but if you are really there, I believe that you could show that to me." 5
__________
I tried
turning over a new leaf. I stopped my sexual affairs, and grew a
beard taking a vow not to return to my life of sexual sin. I wanted
to change and have a new identity. I thought that being a Christian
was cleaning up my life, trying to be good enough to go to heaven. I
was trying to get away from my sins, but didn't know where to go. I
was dealing with the symptoms of something deeper, my hardened heart.
My sinful actions were just evidence of my heart condition. A
condition I had tried to change through religion, drugs, witchcraft,
fantasy, romance, and denial of the idea of existence itself.
The Pharisees
were religious people who prided themselves for being so good. Jesus
told them: "The tax collectors and whores will go into the
kingdom of God before you." The tax collectors and whores knew
they were sinners and saw their need to repent, but the Pharisees
thought they were holy and good and didn't think they needed to
repent. I was like the Pharisees. I would condemn the "bad"
people that I knew. I thought that if I just stopped the
"Big" sins, I'd be fine, as long as I wasn't worse than
most people.
I told God that I was making a great sacrifice to Him by giving up my adultery with Elvira. I still thought I was giving up something good. It wouldn't be till later that I would see the ugliness of my sins. I still didn't see myself as a sinner. I was just running from being wounded.
__________
Margaret kept
popping up in my life. I went to her apartment to talk with her and
do some drugs. She was laying in bed. I leaned over and kissed her.
Her face changed into Elvira's face as I was kissing her. She laughed
and asked me, "Who were you kissing? Elvira?"
I walked out. As I sat in the car in front of her house, getting ready to drive off, she came up, leaned in the car window and looked at me. Her eyes were hypnotic, her hair was writhing snakes like the goddess Medusa. I asked her, "Who are you?" She said, "I'll be back for you, I am your death." I drove off and never saw her again.
__________
I had been
praying along with my magic. One day I heard someone on the radio
preaching that Jesus was the Son of God, and that he led a sinless
life and died on the cross to pay for our sins. Then he said
"When you pray, pray "In Jesus Name." I thought that
was just a different mantra so I decided to try it. To my amazement,
I could hardly get the word Jesus out of my mouth. Satan hates the
name of Jesus because it is the Name above all Names. Satan
had a hold on me and didn't want to let go, such a hold on me, that
I could not utter the name of Jesus. My tongue was tied. I tried and
tried and tried until finally I was gradually able to call on the
name of Jesus. Jesus began to set me free.
I was studying
Christian Science, an occult metaphysical organization. Since it had
a Christian name, I thought it might explain Christianity to me. I
had been telling Elvira what I had read in the tract I got at Mardi
Gras about the Blood of Jesus paying for our sins. Christian Science
despised the idea of the blood atonement of Jesus shedding his blood
for our sins because they did not believe in sin, so Elvira liked
Christian Science because she didn't want to think about sin either.
Charles, a
friend of mine at work, saw me reading Science and Health and Keys to
the Scriptures, the main book of Christian Science. He said, "You
shouldn't be studying that. That stuff isn't true. Christian Science
is a false religion. There is nothing Christian about it." For
some reason, I believed him.
He invited me
to go to Word of Faith with him. I had been there before with the
preacher from India. I wanted to know more about being a Christian,
so I went with Charles. I decided I wanted to be a Christian. One
night, when I was there with Charles, Pastor Robert Tilton prayed for
me and cast demons out of me.
I can't
feel you any more, I can't even touch the books you've read. Every
time I crawl past your door, I've been wishing I've been someone else
instead. 6
Elvira kept
trying to get me to come back to her. I was in a tremendous spiritual
battle, like trying to get out of the Mafia. I just kept on standing
on what I had read in the Bible. Elvira said, "You see me as the
serpent, but it's you that's the serpent!" My way of breaking up
was to put all the blame on her. I'd always put all the blame on others.
Elvira still
wanted to be friends. She told me, "Bob Dylan has become a
Christian. He has a new record, Slow
Train Coming."
I bought the record. She gave me a silver cross. I threw it away
because I didn't want anything associated with her.
We were tired
of hurting each other and so we prayed together that Jesus would
either put us together or break us apart. He separated us, and we
never got back together again.
One morning at
dawn I was riding my motorcycle down a winding road by a lake
enjoying the crisp morning air. As I pulled back on to the highway,
words of a song by Jackson Browne hit me:
"I've
been up and down this highway, far as my eyes can see. No matter how
fast I run, I can never seem to get away from me. No matter where I
am, I can't help feeling I'm just a day away from where I want to
be." 1
Like the rest
of my friends, I talked about finding myself, but I didn't really
want to find myself. I was hiding from myself, living a masquerade. I
said that I was on the quest for truth, but I didn't want truth. I
was running from the truth, and from the guilt that plagued me.
Deep inside my
heart was a yearning, a craving, an insatiable drive to find
happiness. I had spent all my time and substance searching for it,
but all I had ever found were fleeting shadows of happiness.
Happiness always seemed to be right around the corner, one day away,
just out of reach. Life had no meaning, because it really wasn't life
at all.
I rode out to
the woods, parked my motorcycle, and walked through the woods
carrying my Bible until I came to a secluded spot where I could be
alone and reflect on these thoughts that were flowing through my mind.
I sat on the
ground in the middle of the trail, opened my Bible and began to read.
I don't remember what I read, but the Holy Spirit of God fell on me.
I looked around. His presence was so strong that the ground seemed to
tremble and I thought Jesus was standing behind a nearby tree in
front of me. I was afraid to move, afraid that Jesus might step out
from behind that tree.
Then I turned
to the Book of Malachi which said:
"The lord
is witness between you and the wife of your youth, with whom you have
broken faith though she is your betrothed wife. Did he not make one
being, with flesh and spirit... for I hate divorce, says the Lord,
the God of Israel." 2
I knew without
a doubt that God was calling my attention to these words. Just
thinking of Barbara made me angry. I hated her. My heart sank within
me. Conviction of my lack of love broke me. I was caught in a vise.
One side was my hatred, and the other side was the Word of God
telling me to love Barbara.
__________
The wicked
have no peace and you just can't fake it. There's only one road, and
it leads to Calvary. 3
The Knight of
Mirrors in the story Man of La Mancha confronted don Quixote with his
fantasy and foolishness, but did not present him the truth. But like
a mirror, the Bible was shining truth into my soul, breaking through
my masks of graciousness, pleasant smiles and false humility. 4
My search for
truth and my quest for the promised land had brought me to the mirror
of truth. There was no getting around it, over it, or under it. I sat
naked before God. My sins paraded before me; selfishness, lying,
stealing, cursing, hatred, adultery, sorcery. They were ugly, I was
ugly, full of darkness and death. I had to fall hard to see my fallen
state. Some don't have to fall that hard to see they are sinners.
The tract I
received at Mardi Gras asked if I was going to Heaven or to Hell. Now
I knew the answer to that question. I was headed for Hell. I had
stopped my adultery, but my hatred of Barbara was enough to keep me
from standing in the presence of a Holy God.
My notion of
love had been backwards. What I had pursued as love wasn't true love.
It was self gratification. Love was not grasping, it was giving, but
I always took. There was no love in me to give. I had finally found
myself. I was a selfish corrupt sinner, a liar, a child of the devil,
the Father of lies. The devil had no life or love to give. All the
devil could do was to steal, kill, and destroy, and I was just like
him. 5
I could only
love if love was in my nature. I needed a new nature, a new father
who loved. The love I was looking for could only be found in God.
Only God had love to give. I needed to be adopted by Him, to be his child. I
needed to be born again, born of his spirit. I needed to repent. My
life had to change. No matter how hard I tried, I could never clean
up my life enough to go to Heaven. I wanted to change. I saw then
that I needed to have Jesus as my Savior. He had been offered as a
sacrifice in my place to pay for my sins and reconcile me to God. I'd
never make it any other way. 6
I asked Jesus
to forgive me for all my sins and be Lord of my life. I bowed my head
and asked Him to change me into the person He wanted me to be. Jesus
forgave me and poured His love into my heart. He cracked my heart of
stone. He gave me a new heart that wanted to please Him. I was no
longer angry, my hate was gone. I forgave Barbara for all the things
she had done to me. Grace and relief came upon me. My guilt vanished
as I knew without a doubt that my sins had been forgiven. 7
Eight years
and many fools had passed through my life since I had begun my search
for the truth. Now, I knelt on the ground crying before God with a
Bible in my hand.
"For God
so Loved the World that He gave His only Begotten Son, that Whosoever
believeth in Him should not perish, but have Everlasting Life. For
God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world: but that
the world through Him might be saved." John 3:16,17.
__________
In the past, I
had tried to keep God's commandments because I was afraid of Him. The
law of the Ten Commandments could never give life, the law only
brought death; it was a mirror of my lost condition. 8
Jesus said to
love my enemies, to love the unlovable, to turn the other cheek, and
forgive those who mistreated me. Jesus said that in doing these
things I would be like my Father in Heaven. I used to try to imitate
Jesus, thinking that would make me become like Him. Jesus wasn't
trying to explain a code of conduct of works. He was revealing the
nature of God, the Love of God. The love of God could not be
imitated. Love is a person, Life is a person, that person is Jesus
Christ. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Life only exists in
Jesus because He is God, and God is Love. 9
Cynthia and I
used to sit around and wonder what the meaning of life was. I had
found the answer. The meaning of life was having Jesus living in me,
having the Love of God in me, and Loving others with that love.
There was only one commandment to follow now. To Love God and to love one another. In this was all the law and all the commandments. Jesus had begun a work in me and He would finish it. 10
__________
I stood to my
feet and walked on down the trail to the river. As I stood there,
leaning against a tree, watching the ripples in the water, I wondered
why it had taken God so long to get through to me? I remembered how
many times God had sent someone to me to tell me the Truth, to tell
me about Jesus. There was Bob, the Jesus freak who stopped and helped
me on the road, Joan's tract, Dwayne, Virgil, the preacher from
India, the hand in the crowd, Ray, and Charles. Many people planting
seeds of truth in my mind and some watering them. I resisted
repentance because I thought my sins were so precious and didn't
realize they were destroying me. I didn't want to give them up so I
suffered in them. I wanted to be saved in my sins, not from them. I
had really played the fool. The rainbows I had been riding were
delusions of grandeur, the vanity of my imagination, following the
spirits of the devil. I had been full of hate. I had to be broken and
humbled to receive Truth and The Love of God. 11
How ironic it
was that I had found happiness in the one place I least expected to
find it, In Jesus. I could hardly believe it. I had mocked Bob and
the Jesus Freaks who talked about Jesus, and being born again. Now I
was born again.
It was noon now. I slowly walked back down the trail, put my Bible in my backpack, and just sat on the motorcycle looking at my hands on the handlebars drinking in what had happened. I was a new person. Things were going to be different from now on. I hit the starter button, circled back to the main road and headed back to my apartment. 12
__________
My apartment
was like a cave. Black velvet drapes hung on the walls. On my voodoo
altar were candles and two chalices that Gypsy had bought me at
Mayfest the year before. Above my altar hung a macrame implanted with
a painted cow skull crowned with wings from an owl. My bookcases were
filled with books of witchcraft and the occult. These things had
meant a lot to me. They seemed dead and different now.
I went outside
and walked over to see Darlene, a friend who lived two doors down
from me. We'd cook dinner for each other, listen to music, go out to
the lake and just talk. I told her about my experience with Jesus.
She didn't understand, but she was happy for me.
Later that evening, I went to see Shanda to share my experience with her. She was sitting at her kitchen table smoking a joint with one of her friends. She offered me a hit and I told her, " Thanks, but I don't need it." I talked to them about Jesus. She said, "You're copping out. Whatever it takes to get rid of guilt was all the same. Forgiveness of sins and release from guilt are just another head trip. You just have to be true to yourself." I talked with her and her friend for a while, then left and drove out to the country to see Mike. He was standing by a fire he had made in his back yard. The smoke was getting in my eyes. He said "The smoke likes you." I walked around to the upwind side of the fire and began to tell him how I had been born again, and how Jesus had set me free from my hate. He just laughed at me. It was dark now. Mike just stood there staring at the flames and grinning. He didn't want to talk. I said, "I have to be going, Mike, see you around." I walked around to the front of his house, then I got in my car and drove home.
__________
It had been a
special day. I wasn't ready for it to end just yet. I walked over to
the bank of the creek behind my apartment. The bright moon cast a
silver shimmer into the water that wove its way through the rocks,
cascading into a silent pool. As I sat there thinking about the day,
it made me sad that Darlene, Shanda, and Mike didn't understand what
Jesus had done in my life. They just thought I was on another head trip.
That's exactly
what I had thought about my boss Bob, and the other Christians five
years before. Now I knew why he and the others were so excited about
Jesus. Now I knew why they had been sad for me because I hadn't been
interested. They knew I had a rocky road ahead and I was going to
have to learn the hard way
__________
The next day,
I returned to work and told Bob my exciting news. His jaw dropped.
When he got over his surprise, he said, "Well Ron, I've sure
learned something from this. I've learned never to give up on anyone.
I thought you would never get saved."
Gonna take a sentimental journey, Gonna set my heart at ease,
Gonna make
a sentimental journey, To renew old memories. 1
I took a
vacation and set out on a sentimental journey to Louisiana, to
retrace my roots and visit my relatives on the farm. Darlene packed
some sandwiches for me to take on my trip. It would be good to get
away for a while. I went in a VW van, a camper, with a table and a
fold-down bed in it. I had traded my sports car for it, had rebuild
the engine, and done a brake job on it before I left on the trip.
When I got to
Shreveport, I went to visit my old friend Dwayne Weaver. It was nice
to see him again. I spent the night at his house. We stayed up late,
talking and laughing about old times and how great it was that God
had saved me.
Early the next
morning, I drove to see the house where I lived during my school
days. The house was gone, and in its place was a parking lot. I got
out of the van and walked to the back of the lot. The alley was still
there, and the periwinkles were blooming along a fence just like they
did when I was a kid. I looked across the alley and saw that the
house of my childhood friend, Butch, was still there. We used to have
great times together, we'd play in the creek, built forts, and spend
a lot of time in our tree house. There were times when we didn't get
along well. Sometimes it would be his fault, and sometimes it was
mine. We'd get angry, say some ugly things, and then wouldn't speak
to each other for a while. During these angry times, we'd play with
other kids and count each other as an enemy.
The times that it was my fault, I'd try to make up with Butch. I'd say, "I'm sorry for what I did. Will you be my friend?" But he wouldn't accept my apology right away. Then I'd say, "I'll give you my favorite Comic Book if you'll be my friend." He'd accept my gift, the offence would be forgotten, we would be reconciled, and enjoyed our friendship again.
__________
A barking dog
interrupted my reflections. I walked down the alley to the creek. It
wasn't nearly as long a walk as I remembered. It seems like growing
older and traveling makes a lot of things seem smaller and less
significant. I remembered building dams in the creek, and navigating
the creek in homemade boats that always sank. I walked back up the
hill to my van, and headed for the Catholic high school I had attended.
The school was
in the middle of downtown Shreveport. It took me a while to find it.
I used to ride to school on my bicycle, but after I moved away, a lot
of new roads had been added, and the buildings had changed, so I
didn't recognize the route. Finally, I found the school, and parked
across the street from it. I just sat there, looking at the school
building and the church. There were a lot of memories there, but most
of them had not been pleasant, so I hadn't missed them. I got out of
the van, and walked across the street.
__________
Ave Maria
The school and
the grounds were run down. The statue of Mary in the grotto where my
classmates and I used to pose for pictures had an arm broken off. I
walked down the sidewalk, across the grass, until I stood before the
statue. I remembered kneeling before this statue, praying to Mary. I
also remembered placing garlands of flowers on another statues of
Mary, crowing her "Queen of the Roses, Queen of the May." I
had been very devoted to Mary, and had worn her Scapular, which was a
couple of scratchy piece of cloth connected by ribbons. I wore it
under my clothes. It was supposed to insure my salvation.
Mary was a
virgin when she gave birth to Jesus. She was an humble servant of
God. He had greatly honored her by choosing her to be the mother of
Jesus, however the Catholic Church had added many things to what the
Bible had said about her. They elevated her to a position that
belonged only to Jesus.
My Catholic
teachers said Mary was sinless, and that she was my life, my advocate
and my hope. They said Jesus was my savior, but I was supposed to
pray to Mary and ask her to convince Jesus to hear my prayers. This
caused me a lot of confusion for a long time. 2
The Bible said that only Jesus was sinless. He had ascended to Heaven and is there, standing before God the Father as my only advocate, constantly making intercession for me. The name of Jesus was the only name I must call on to be saved. Life and hope is only in Him, and I didn't need any mediator to intercede to Jesus for me, because He wanted me to confidently come directly to Him. He loved me and wanted to help me. Jesus alone was worthy of my devotion. 3
__________
I retraced my
steps back to the driveway, looked at the house where the priests
lived, kicked a rock across the driveway, then walked over to the
church. I went inside, sat on a pew near the back of the church, and
looked around. I had been there many times before.
Agnus Dei
The walls were
lined with the Stations of the Cross. They depicting the suffering
and death of Jesus. My eyes came to rest on the Crucifix above the
altar. When I was a child, I would say in The
Apostles Creed,
" He suffered, died and was buried, He descended into Hell, and
on the third day, He rose again from the dead from whence He will
come to judge the living and the dead." I never knew why Jesus
had to come down to Earth and die on the cross. Jesus as the judge is
all I knew. I didn't know Him as Savior because I wasn't taught that
He had saved me. I was taught that I had to save myself.
The God I
served as a Catholic was a blindfolded judge, who held a sword in one
hand, and a pair of scales in the other. He showed no mercy. On one
side of the scales were all my sins that had offended him; all of his
commandments I had broken, all the religious rules I had not kept,
and all bad things I had done to people. I had to pay for my sins. I
had to patch up things with God, just like I always had to patch
things up with my friend, Butch.
Another prayer
came to mind, the Agnus Dei: "Lamb of God who takest away the
sins of the world, have mercy on us." I used to kneel before the
Crucifix, saying that prayer, but according to what I had been
taught, Jesus had not taken away my sins. My sins were always still there.
__________
He paid a
debt He did not owe. I Owed a debt I could not pay. I needed someone
to wash my sins away. And now I sing a brand new song "Amazing
Grace" All day long Christ Jesus paid a debt, that I could never
pay 4
The Truth was
that Salvation is complete in what Jesus did. He had come to the
Earth to be offered as a sacrifice, to be slain for my sins as the
spotless Lamb of God. Jesus was offered one time for our sins and
said, "It is finished," when He died on the cross. As the
Mediator, he had purged all our sins with His blood. Through the
merits of Jesus alone, my salvation was paid for in full and it was a
"Free Gift " available to me, and to anyone else who would
reach out and receive Jesus as Lord and Savior. God would be merciful
to my iniquities and He would not remember my sins any more. All who
trusted in Jesus were acquitted and declared not guilty. There was no
more earthly priesthood offering sacrifice to God. That
was the New Testament. 5
The Catholic
Church didn't teach the New Testament. They didn't believe that Jesus
had finished the work of salvation on the cross, instead, they kept
offering Jesus over and over again in the Mass. They
said His sufferings and death added a lot of merit to the
"Treasury of Grace" but He had not gained enough for my
salvation. Additional merit had to be added to this "Treasury of
Grace;" merit gained by the sufferings and good works of Mary,
the "Saints," and merit earned by my own good works and sufferings.
Catholicism
was a religion of good works for salvation. It taught that I had to
pay for and atone for my own sins by adding penances, earning
indulgences, and finally, finishing the job by burning in the fire of
Purgatory. This would complete the payment for sin and balance the
scales on my behalf so God would let me in Heaven. Their teachings
were all of human origin, and opposed what God says in the Bible.
They had a
zeal for good works, but for the wrong reason. It's not that good
works were not important. Good works are important. Good works are
the fruit and result of Salvation, but they are not the means of salvation.
God's ways
were different. I had offended Him, yet He is the one who offered the
gift of reconciliation to me. I didn't have anything of value to
offer Him so he provided the offering of His Son Jesus. Jesus paid
the price of reconciliation. I was on good terms with God again. We
were friends. Mercy triumphed over Justice. That was the Gospel, the
good news.
_________
Nothing I
could offer him could buy his forgiveness. I had been trying to earn
something that God had already given to me, and anything I would try
to offer him as payment was like holding out my hand to him, offering
Him an old filthy rag. It would take a lot more than a comic book or
a bunch of ritualistic prayers to do the job. Nothing could be added
to what Jesus did on the cross 2000 years ago. Two thousand rosaries,
five thousand Masses, and ten thousand years burning in purgatory
would not even be a grain of sand on the beach of grace. All there
was for me to do was to rest in his love.
I got out of the pew and walked out the door, down the steps to the street. I turned and took one last look, crossed the street, got back in the van, and headed south.
__________
It was about
mid afternoon when I was driving along a stretch of road about
halfway from Shreveport and my grandparents' house. This stretch of
road had a memory for me.
When I was a
kid, our family would drive down to central Louisiana to visit my
grand- parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was great fun. My
mother's family lived along the bank of a bayou and I'd play with my
cousins. My dad's family lived on a farm. I used to love walking out
in the field with my dad's father. He would tell me stories of
Indians that used to live on his land and he'd show me civil war
bullets and arrowheads he had found in the fields. He showed me how
to make a pitcher out of gourds that grew along the fence in the
pasture. He had a blacksmith shop and he'd let me crank the blower on
the forge. I'd feed the chickens and milk the cow. It was such a nice
change from the city life I lived.
Alongside this
same stretch of road to my Grandparents' farm there was an old wooden
sign that said Jesus Saves! I'd see it every time we went to see my
Grandparents. I can still picture it now after all these years. As
we'd drive by, I'd ask what it meant. No one knew what "Jesus
Saves" meant. We concluded it must be some strange religion.
Now I know
that Jesus Saves! , and I lift up my voice in praise to Him, looking
forward to the day in that land far away when in the company of the
saved, He will extend to me a nail scarred hand in a crowd.
Three hours
later, I drove up the long driveway to my Grandparents's house. My
uncle Tom and his wife lived there now. I walked up the steps and
called out. My aunt said, "Come on in Ronald and have something
to eat." It was like I had been there yesterday, yet it had been
sixteen years since I had seen them. The food was good and I asked,
"What is it?" They laughed and said, "Don't ask until
you have finished." Then they told me it was garfish balls. It
was scrumptious.
I went with my
uncle and cousins back into the fields where they were farming 600
acres of soybeans. We went to the woods, gathered some muscadines and
came back to the house. I took a ride on their old Harley Super-glide
We talked of old times and I told them about what Jesus had done for me.
The next day,
I returned to Dallas, refreshed.
When I
returned, I went into hermitage. All my life, I had tried to change
my ways to be the way women wanted me. I'd go shopping for clothes
with Barbara because she liked to shop. I'd go to art shops and
quaint bars because Elvira liked them. I tried to dress like I
thought girls wanted me to dress. I tried to adopt other people's
values to get along with them. I was tired of it. I told God that if
He wanted a wife for me, He'd have to drop her through the ceiling of
my apartment because I wasn't looking for one anymore. I had enough
with fantasy, dating, and sorcery.
The light I
had been following was darkness. I
saw how vain and ridiculous all of my "secret knowledge"
Mystery Religion beliefs really were. Jesus had drawn me out of it.
I stood
outside my apartment and thought, "I'm going to walk in there as
if I had died and I was a stranger deciding what to keep and what to
get rid of."
I threw all my
sentimental things that were associated with Elvira into the creek
along with my wedding ring from Barbara and the wedding ring that
Pearl had bought me for our marriage that never happened.
I gave my sons
the family pictures I thought they may want, then I burned all my
pictures, poetry, writings, occult and magic books, and records in a
whiskey barrel on the back porch of my apartment. I'm still amazed
the fire department didn't come. They probably thought it was a big cookout.
I told Darlene
what I had done and she was sad. She had liked my poetry and
writings, but I wanted to go on to a new life. I bought a piano
keyboard and started piano lessons at Brookhaven College. I played
along with my new records of Bob Dylan praising God for saving me.
Three weeks
later a friend of mine, Susan Cox, called me. We had worked at the
same engineering company for a year then she left. She was
experiencing a lot of problems and her brother told her the answers
were in the Bible. Susan knew that I was always studying some kind of
religion so she called me and I went over and visited her. I shared
what Jesus had done in my life and we studied the Bible together. She
repented of her sins, received forgiveness, and became born again on
October 24, 1979.
We were
married a month later.
...but that's
another story.
I'm sorry for
all the people in this story I used and condemned. I want all those
who were involved in my life to know that I love them.
Jeff, forgive
me for deserting you and for being so selfish and insensitive to your
plea for me to stay with you, Gavin, and Barbara, and for flaunting
my adulterous affair with Elvira in your face.
Gavin, forgive
me for deserting you so early in your life, and for giving you such a
poor example of what a Daddy is and what a family is.
Barbara,
forgive me for using you to build my self esteem, for dragging you
into marriage, for my selfishness, and for ignoring your needs.
Elvira,
forgive me for using you to satisfy my wounded pride, and for the
hurt I caused you. I also ask forgiveness of your two daughters for
parading our affair before them.
Paul, forgive
me for adultery against your wife.
Shannon,
forgive me for rejecting your love for me for so long.
Jerry, forgive
me for resenting you and tormenting you when you were a child and for
not being a good brother to you when you were always so good to me.
Margaret,
forgive me for hating you.
Mamay, forgive
me for causing you such shame.
Daddy, forgive
me for not appreciating you more.
Mark. forgive
me for pushing you away instead of loving you more.
Susan, forgive
me for being so legalistic during the first years of our marriage and
for trying to mold you into an image of what I wanted you to be.
I forgive
those who have hurt me and deceived me, and pray that they will
repent and be released from their sins and guilt by the Blood of Jesus.
I pray that
all of you have found the Love of God in Jesus Christ. If you have
not already, ask Jesus into your heart. He wants to change your life
into a better life that you can ever imagine or dream.
"Love one another as I have Loved you." 1
"Greater love has no man than he lay down his life for a friend" 2
"Love one
another. By this will men know that you are my disciples" 3
"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity,
I am become a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though
I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries,
and all knowledge; and though I have all faith,
so that I could remove mountains,
and have not charity,
I am
nothing." 4
Thus is it written in The Book
I've told my
story. What's yours? How are your doing in your search for happiness?
|
If you died right now, while you were reading this, would you go
to Heaven, or to Hell?
... from a hand in the crowd |
References:
1.Possession
1.The Magical Mystery Tour - by The Beatles- Magical Mystery Tour album.
2.I am a Walrus - by the Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour album.
3.The Magical Mystery Tour - by the Beatles.
4.ibid.
2.False Expectations
1. Let the Sunshine in - From The Musical Hair.
3.Adultery
1.1The philosophy of the Troubadours was that "marriage...had no connection with love; it was a matter of status, and the continuing of the family...true love could only exist between unmarried persons. ... Love is a never-satisfied searching and longing for a good that is not yet possessed... Love is seen above all as a quest in which all the comforts and conventions of settled life are discarded." pp 217, 218 of The Troubadours and their World - by Jack Lindsay.
2.Fountain of Sorrow - by Jackson Browne- from album Late for the sky.
3.Have You Ever Been Mellow - by Olivia Newton John.
Mandy - by Barry Mantilow.
Laughter in the Rain - by Neil Sedaka.
Best of my Love - by The Eagles.
My eyes adored you - by Frankie Valle.
4.Sorcery
1.Dust in the Wind - by Kansas - Eden album.
5.Insanity
1.A Saying of a false prophet and Zen Master.
2.Your Bright Baby Blues- by Jackson Browne- The Pretender
3.I thought I was a Child- by Jackson Browne- Everyman.
6.Antichrist
1.Cats in the Cradle - by Harry Chapman and Sandra Chapman.
2."A foolish woman...says to him Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant, he knows not that the dead are there and her guests are in the depths of Hell"- Proverbs 9:13-18.
3.Mandala- A diagram used in witchcraft.
7.The Asylum
8.Life After Thorazine
1.Child of Satan, Child of God - by Susan Atkins, Chapter 11 Helter Skelter, Page 112.
2.Here Come those Tears Again- by Jackson Browne- The Pretender.
3.The Holy Bible- Deuteronomy 11:26-28.
4.Fountain of Sorrow, by Jackson Browne- Late for the Sky album.
5.Still the Same - by Bob Seger Silver Bullet Band- Stranger in Town Album.
6."No man can serve two masters" - Matthew 6:24
7.Catholicism left the second Commandment out and split the last
commandment against coveting into two commandments to make ten commandments.
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Catholic 10 Commandments |
Bible's 10 Commandments |
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1. I am the LORD your God, You shall have no other gods before me. |
1. I am the LORD thy God. . . . . Thou shalt not have strange gods before me. (Exodus 20:2-3) |
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2. "Thou shalt not make to thee a graven thing (image), nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that in the waters under the earth: Thou shalt not adore (bow down to) them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God, jealous, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." (Exodus 20:4-5) |
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2 Thou shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. |
3. "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain." (Exodus 20:7) |
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3.Thou shalt keep holy the Sabbath day. |
4. "Remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day." (Exodus 20:8) |
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4.Honor thy father and thy mother. |
5. "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thou mayest be long lived upon the land which the LORD thy God will give thee." (Exodus 20:12) |
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Catholic 10 Commandments |
Bible's 10 Commandments |
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5. Thou shalt not kill. |
6. "Thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13) |
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6. Thou shalt not commit adultery |
7. "Thou shalt not commit adultery." (Exodus 20:13) |
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7. Thou shalt not steal. |
8. "Thou shalt not steal." (Exodus 20:15) |
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8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. |
9. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." (Exodus 20:16) |
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9. Thy shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. |
10. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house: neither shalt thou desire his wife, nor his servant, nor his handmaid, nor his ass, nor any thing that is his."(Exodus 20:17) |
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10. Thy shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods. |
8.Man of La Mancha is a book, play and Movie by Dale Wasserman, based on The Adventures of don Quixote by Cervantes.
9." God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness (wrongfulness of character)"- I Thessalonians 2:11-12.
9.A Hand in the Crowd
1.Jesus said some people hear but don't understand - Matthew 13:14, 13:43.
2.Proverbs 4:20-27.
3.Proverbs 6:23- 33.
4.Proverbs 7:5-27.
5.We must come to God in Faith, believing he will hear us - Hebrews 11:6.
6.Idiot Wind - Bob Dylan - from Blood on the Tracks album.
10.The Mirror of Truth
1.Your Bright Baby Blues- by Jackson Browne- The Pretender album.
2.Malachi 2:14-16.
3.Saving Grace- by Bob Dylan-, from the "Saved" album.
4.Opt Cit -Man of La Mancha.
5.Jesus said those who do the works of the devil are his children - John 8:44.
6.God and his love dwells in Christians -1 John 4:15,16
Jesus says we must be born again to enter the kingdom of God- John 3:5-7, Matthew 18:3.
God chose to make us his children , to set us free by the Blood of Jesus and forgive our sins - Ephesians 1:4-7.
After we are born again, our minds will be renewed by the Holy Spirit to be like Jesus as we study his word. We will walk in his love - 4:17 - 5:19.
Through faith we are adopted and have received the Holy Spirit who tells us we are god's children- Romans 8:15,16, Titus 3:3-7.
7.If we confess our sins, Jesus will forgive us and cleanse us -1 John 1:9.
Jesus translated us and forgave us- Colossians 1:13,14.
God promised to give us new hearts that would want to walk in God's ways and keep his commandments- Ezekiel 11:19,20.
8.The law was our teacher to show us our need for Jesus to save us - Galatians 3:24
9.We know we have been born again and that God is in us and we are in him because we are like him. If we say we are saved and love God but hate people we are liars - 1-John 4:7 - 21.
Love your neighbor as yourself - Leviticus 19:18.
Be like God your Father, love your enemies - Matthew 5:43-48.
10.The greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, mind and strength, and love our neighbor as ourself- all the commandments and laws hang on this - Matthew 22:36-40.
11.I ran from the light because my deeds were evil - John 3_16-21.
God had brought me down like he brought Lucifer down. I had said like Lucifer I will exalt my throne above the stars of God -Isaiah 14:13
I had to become as a little child to be converted and enter the kingdom of heaven -Matthew 18:3,4.
God had given me the power to become his son because I had believed in the name of Jesus - John 1:12,13.
Jesus said " I am the resurrection and the life Whoever lives and believes in me will never die" - John 11:25,26.
12.I was a new person. Old things had passed away, all things had become new, I had been reconciled to God - 2 Corinthians 5:15-17.
I had been translated into the Kingdom of Jesus, which is not of this world, my sins were forgiven , Colossians 1:12-14.
Who the son makes free is free indeed - John 8:35.
11. Sentimental Journey
1.Sentimental Journey- Sung by Sinatra-Writer(s): Brown/Homer/Green .
2.Catholicism presents Mary as being the sinless mediator to Jesus.
Ref: in the " Hail Mary" prayer: "Holy Mary, Mother of God pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death."
Ref: in the "Hail Holy Queen" prayer: She is presented as our life, our hope and our advocate: "Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our Life, our sweetness and our Hope...turn most gracious advocate thy eyes of mercy towards us...pray for us O Holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ".
3.All have sinned (except Jesus): Romans 3:23.
Jesus alone was perfectly obedient and sinless: Hebrews 4:15,16; Romans 5:18,19.
Jesus alone is our advocate to God: 1 John 2:1.
Jesus is our only Mediator: 1 Timothy 2:5.
The name of Jesus is the only name by which we must be saved: Acts 4:10-12.
We don't need a mediator to Jesus, he is wants us to come to Him: Hebrews 4:15,16.
God gives his glory to no other: Isaiah 42: 8.
4.He Paid a Debt- Author Unknown.
5.Jesus was offered one time for our sins: Hebrews 7:27; Hebrews 10:12-18.
Jesus said "It is finished" when He died for our sins: John 19:30.
Our sins are not purged in Purgatory. Jesus purged our sins with His Blood: Hebrews 1:3; and Hebrews 9:14,15.
Salvation is a Free Gift. It cannot me merited by our works: Romans 5:15; Romans 6:23; and Ephesians 2:8,9.
Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved: Romans 10:12,13.
6.Jesus finished the work of salvation on the cross, there is no
priests on earth, no more altars on earth, no more sacrifices on
earth. Jesus is gone into Heaven. He is not offered any more: Hebrews
9:11; Hebrews 9:24-28; Hebrews 10:10.
12Apology
1.John 15:12,13.
2.1 John 3:16.
3.John 13:34.
4.1 Cor 13:1,2.
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