--All of my life I have looked for something deeper. Not an explanation to hide within, but a feeling there was more than living and then dying. My childhood was emotionally, and I was rough on others. Yet for some reason I still believed. I thought my anger was a result of my feeling hopeless in this roughness, but I now know it was my desiring the depth I could not find that caused the anger.

-One day, at age 18,  I arrived home from school to discover my mother after her suicide.  As I looked at

her from inches away I heard a loud crack, like a massive dry tree branch breaking. Suddenly I was twenty feet in the air looking down at me, looking at my mother, and I heard a voice, quite, tiny, riveting, piercing through a barrier of perception of some kind. It asked “Is that all there is Doug, to be someone’s son, to be someone’s father, to be someone’s husband, to work, and then die?” I than slammed back into my body, and ran to get the police. Mom’s suicide had a strong impact, but I was obsessed with that voice.  I spent much of my life trying to reach it again

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-I tried many things, drugs, living in the streets, being a success in business, learning to think powerfully, theology, indifference, not much helped as I sank into my heart of darkness. Fortnately in my life I met a therapist who, in combination with my desire to get straightened out, managed to stablaize me. Even though I still thought the anger, I didn’t feel it. This seemed good enough.

-After many years, one night, while pacing in meditation, intensely focused, yet after many years I was still filled with anger -- I was struck by an energy, like a lightning

strike. I experienced it as unbearably powerful, compassionate, and external to me, though saying it was outside or inside me had no baring on the situation.  It was painful. I lay in bed for a week, my neck throbbing. But in the flash of that strike, decades of self hatred, darkness and vilification vanished, as if a surgeon had  cut it out.  I was suddenly calm. As months have passed I have become peaceful, happy, compassionate, and yes even loving.  If you think this story is weird, consider my situation.  To be at peace after a life of hate? I died, and started again, just like the ancient stories describe it.