THE AUTHOR
Mason Wooldridge: Author of If You Live It
…Who am I?
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This is an excellent question because it provides context for the rest of the journey we’re about to take. What the world today calls Mason has not always been what’s present, but what is present now was always a possibility for what the world would get to experience.
I speak of myself in the third person not for the purpose of separation, but for the purpose of description. I was once lost, scared, fearful of the future and worried about the past catching up with me. I was running away from an inevitability I couldn’t articulate at a younger age. But I was always out ahead of a calling that seemed never to be within my grasp.
Today, I am the byproduct of a fully surrendered life, a life the world would see as a linear movement through time like most with a job and a family, dogs and a house, but these are not the things that define what or who I am. I have experienced highs and lows, and not unlike you reading this today, I survived most of my life, as opposed to getting out of the way of Life. Which was necessary in order that this life could take on a meaning and significance far greater than what I thought possible as a youth growing up in a perpetual state of confusion.
As a child, I grew up for a time with a mother and father married and building a life together. At an early age, my parents decided to go their separate ways, with custody of me going to my mom and the “fun” weekends being spread out occasionally with my dad. For the most part, my mother raised me with the help of a stepfather and the loving kindness of grandparents from my father’s side. I had aunts and uncles on both sides, cousins and brothers, but by growing up in a divorced household early on, what I didn’t know until much later in adulthood was life for me moving into the future would never be stable again like it was within the first few years of coming into a body as an infant.
Shortly after my 11th birthday, my father passed away and life took on a new meaning: wondering why he died, where he went, what happens once we all die, and wondering what the point of being alive was. All of a sudden, as if out of nowhere, after the death of my dad, I had more questions about life than I had answers. I was left to wander the earth without a father to show me the way. My mom, who did her best to love me and provide support, did a great job living for me until she had other obligations with regards to a new husband and new children. Looking back, Mom made decisions believing remarriage would mean a better life for us than she thought possible on her own, but as a young child, I hated her for remarrying and having new kids to give her time and attention to.
As the years progressed from childhood into adolescence, and from adolescence into young adulthood, I lived mostly at Fork Union Military Academy – “Where boys go to become men” – in central Virginia. It was a boarding school for most boys there, but I was one of the handful of what they called “day students,” which meant I spent the day there but went home at night to sleep in a bed not provided by the school. At this school, I met boys from around the world and had teachers who appeared to be fully formed men. I made lifelong friendships with a few such people and generally look back on the years I spent within the walls of that school as fond times and happy memories, but only in hindsight, after I became an adult. You quickly forget the “shared misery” that was our everyday life as 12-year-old “cadets.”
Fork Union Military Academy was founded and instituted within the Southern Baptist Church, which meant chapel service was a regular thing more than twice a week, with religion playing a central role in the discipleship of young men and the lives they would lead there and out into the world thereafter. As a student, I loved the days we had chapel and the lessons the bible taught throughout the course of several different chaplains during my time in uniform. I was searching for answers to life’s biggest questions, and between the discipline of military school, guidance of mature men, and the word of God being pumped into my veins daily through our motto “Body, Mind and Spirit,” I felt more whole than broken. Most days. I would arrive home at the end of the day, however, and be reminded that my dad was dead. And my mom had a new family. And the way my brain worked then, home life seemed to be where the questions about heaven and hell and life and death resumed their plague on me.
As I matured and aged into teen years, as well as into young adult years, I had questions that started off as wonderings that never got fully answered. And they became full-blown issues with the faith of Christianity and the inability to have men of the cloth provide real answers about faith and God that felt authentic and genuine. I found myself growing up with more questions than answers yet again, despite the guidance of more quality men in my life than many could ever hope for.
My mother and stepfather were not rich people. Actually, far from it. I grew up for most of my young life on a farm owned by my step grandparents, and I would classify our financial situation as one of living paycheck to paycheck most months. I was able to attend a pricey military school because when my father passed away the federal government saw to it I received his Social Security benefits until I turned 18 or graduated from high school, whichever came last.
I was always older than my classmates after being held back in kindergarten for being emotionally too juvenile to pass into first grade. It was like a scene in a movie. I told my teacher I had to use the bathroom and when she wouldn’t let me, I peed my pants. I thought about writing “tinkle,” but it was more than a tinkle. A lot more. It was on purpose, too. It was out of defiance, a deliberate action, the outward expression of the emotional trauma of a 5-year-old kid. But it was enough to dictate that I would not graduate from Grasshopper Green with the rest of my class.
As I look back on childhood, I had what felt like a normal upbringing, but in all reality, it wasn’t. However, as I’ve aged, I know my story is far from as rough as many kids across the world have it. But nonetheless, it was formative and full of lessons learned. I was never without food to eat or clothes to wear, even though I would have liked other types of food and different clothes. I was never without a male role model worth listening to despite my stubbornness at times to listen or pay attention to their wisdom. I was never without love and friendships, but I didn’t always notice them in times of deep sorrow and depression, rage, anguish, and moments of wanting to die. Yes, wanting to die. As far back as 11 years old, to follow my dad.
Teenage angst often results in thoughts of ending one’s life, but somewhere in that 11th year I knew there was nothing more important to me than “Is there a God?” And if there wasn’t, then what was the point of me staying here any longer? At 11, every big question that everyone has in their life presented itself to me in a cascading fashion. Divinity finally presented itself at 20, but for nine straight years I asked those questions every day, 365 days a year. “Trauma Informed Care” was not a thing back then, but looking back, I sure was a perfect candidate for it. Some thought I didn’t care about school. I did, but what I cared about more, what was central to everything I cared about, was “Is God real?”
I had a way with girls and enjoyed having a girlfriend, and if you had asked my coaches at the time, I enjoyed having a girlfriend a little too much. As I look back on childhood, I can say with confidence, I was made to be a searcher of truth from an early age. I was filled with discontent and a longing to be free to find out what the world was made of and what my place was within it. I had dreams of waking up as an adult and being free of what felt like an oppressive life, and not unlike many reading this, I was actually spoiled by God with how good life was compared to many others in the world.
Without having a biological father around, I looked for others to be my dad, and almost every time I found a man who loved me and was older, I latched on to him and grew attached. As if marching to a drum beat, every man I grew attached to was there for a season but not a lifetime, save a couple. But at the time I wasn’t concerned with forever. I was concerned with the here and now and receiving the abundance of attention I felt I deserved for just being alive.
I spent many weekends with my grandparents in Lynchburg, Virginia, about an hour or so from Fork Union, and with those trips came more family I could grab onto for love and support. Some of my fondest memories of growing up were surrounded by the family I escaped to on weekends, and later the family I escaped to during the week who were not my biological own. I was constantly moving as a young person, always wondering about life, always praying to God, always questioning what the world told me, and always looking for something that would complete me, or at least provide enough peace of mind to let me rest a weary head for a while and not notice life was continuing to move along without my help.
I found sports as an outlet, not unlike many kids around the world. And I dedicated myself to being a sport’s star with aspirations to play Division 1 basketball. Something happens when you don’t have a dad. You’re either a dastardly kid who doesn’t care about anything, or you worry about everything. I don’t have to tell you which one I was (the kindergarten peeing incident notwithstanding), but there was no end to my worrying. Even in fifth grade I recall walking along Route 15 near our home in Buckingham County and saying to my mom, “There’s no need to save for college because I’m going to get a basketball scholarship.” And that kind of cemented my persona at the time.
The funny thing is, if I remember correctly, I wasn’t even any good at basketball. I was sort of tall for my age but I didn’t hit a growth spurt until junior high school. I went from 5’6 to 6’1 over my seventh-grade year and was 6’3 by the time I was a freshman. I continued to grow until I leveled off at 6’6 well into my 20s. It seemed like overnight I went from not hitting my head on doorways to hitting my head on doorways. In many ways that conversation with my mom set in motion the opportunity to achieve that goal of a scholarship. She explained to me that I was receiving Social Security benefits because of my dad’s death and we could either start putting it away for college, or I could use it right now to attend a private school where I might be able to enhance my basketball talents, such as they were. That school was Fork Union.
I hated where I lived in Buckingham County and the only way out I saw was as a basketball player. It was not that I loved basketball, it was that basketball, as I saw it, was my ticket. I worked my entire life to get a scholarship, and even though I wasn’t the best athlete or the strongest physical specimen, I managed after years of toil and countless hours spent past high school still pursuing this dream, to land a scholarship to one of America’s greatest colleges.
Here’s how it went. Starting in sixth grade I was a student at Fork Union, wearing a military uniform, shaving before I had peach fuzz, spit shining my shoes (with actual spit) and taking showers with other young men who actually had body hair. There’s a world of difference between a sixth grader and an eighth grader. I would wind up setting a record for longest tenure at Fork Union Military Academy stretching over nine years. I would graduate in 2003 and not leave until 2005.
And here’s how that went. Despite my promise to my mom and my lofty expectations and pronouncements, in sixth grade I didn’t even go out for basketball. I went out for swimming. But I wound up going one day to swim practice and never going back. The warm up was something like 25 or 50 laps before we even started practice. I was holding onto the side of the pool wondering “What am I doing?” I showed up at the second day of basketball try-outs instead of the first and still made the team.
Looking back, there were so many men who had my best interests at heart. Steve Macek, the junior high coach and our science teacher, had every right to tell me go play intramurals because I missed that first day. But I think he knew I was a broken kid and maybe needed a “quicker” second chance that others.
I played through my senior year at Fork Union and while I made All Conference, helped the team to our first post-season playoff berth in several years, and was named captain, my dream of a Division I scholarship seemed unrealistic. I had a number of Division II and Division III offers, but it wasn’t until the summer after graduation that the University of Buffalo, a Division I program, called with an offer. But by then I had committed to returning to Fork Union as a post graduate.
During the summer of my junior and senior years I attended Five Star Basketball Camp, in Farmville, Virginia, at Hampton Sydney College. Both summers I made the all-star team. One year, Chris Paul was the point guard on the team I played on. As an aside, Stephen Colbert attended Hampton Sydney.
My freshman year I had a very important coach in Coach Rogers – Coach “Roge” to us. He had played at Virginia Tech. At 6’9 he was scary and intimidating. He ed a no B-S guy. That’s the year I actually dared to believe I could play Division I because I made the team as a freshman for that coach with that team. He was such a good coach that the last game of our season, we played Blue Ridge, a basketball power, which turned out to be a game that exemplified our poor attitude and as a result Coach refused to take us to the playoffs. That was a powerful life lesson he deemed more important than a chance at winning a state basketball championship.
Fork Union was a basketball and football factory. Heisman Trophy winners Vinny Testaverde and Eddie George played football at Fork Union. At one time, there were 27 Fork Union grads actively playing in the NFL. Kevin Plank, founder of Under Armour, was a post-grad football player at Fork Union and, thanks to him, everywhere you look at Fork Union, from uniforms to underwear, you’ll see the UA logo. The post-grad program was legendary, in both sports. In basketball, during any given year there were at least one and perhaps three high level college coaches, from such programs as Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina, sending preferred recruits to Fork Union for seasoning. There would be 12 players on the team. Those not sent from high level collegiate programs, were potential mid-major talents, and the rest all had similar potential.
We had Wednesday night and Saturday night “open gym” for our first month on campus, say August 25 through October 1, and 10 to 20 coaches from around the country would be on hand on Wednesday night and 20 to 30 top college coaches on Saturday. When I was allowed to practice with the team during my under-grad years I saw every big-name coach in the stands: Rick Pitino, Dean Smith, Bill Self, you name it.
The reason I was there with these older guys, all top college recruits, was because during the summer of my freshman going into sophomore year, Coach Fletcher Arritt, arguably the greatest prep basketball coach of all time, came looking for me. Coach Arritt was the reason for Fork Union’s post graduate program success.
He was an example of integrity before I knew what that was. Two things were important about that summer conversation. One was he told me I should pick one sport and focus on it. Baseball had been my first sport since my time in Little League. Coach Arritt told me I had more potential to play college basketball than baseball. “You need to pick one or the other,” he said, “and should you pick basketball. I want to extend an invitation to you to practice with us before and after your season starts.” By “us” he meant that legendary post-grad team. Accepting that invitation would put me in a position, as a 6’3, 165 pound nobody, next to, say, a potential All-American sent there from Kentucky.
More importantly than basketball, what that conversation set in motion was Coach Arritt’s beliefs becoming my beliefs. My sophomore and junior seasons were unremarkable. Coach Roge had left for a local public school after my first year, and during the next two years, I played an equal amount for our new coach as I did as a freshman playing with future Heisman Trophy finalist, Chris Perry, who wound up a future running back for Michigan. The point is, I had no growth as a player.
By the end of my junior season my mother and I started looking for another school to attend because of the lack of opportunity at Fork Union due to the coaching change and a completely different style of play. But right before the end of my junior year, Brooks Berry, who had married Coach Arritt’s daughter, moved back to Fork Union and took over as the varsity basketball coach. And, enthused and rejuvenated, I decided to stay for my senior year.
My senior year was a complete reversal from the previous two years. I went from hardly playing to starting, being leading scorer, making All Conference. One of the reasons senior year produced a different result was because Coach Brooks ran everything that Coach Arritt ran, which was everything I practiced every summer: Passing game, Carolina transition, man to man defense. Funny, I only remember one single play from that senior year. We played Woodbury Forrest in the Prep League. I had never beaten WF in the three previous years of high school. The last game of the regular season, we were up maybe 10 or 12 points with 30 seconds left. A teammate got a steal and I tomahawked a dunk. I felt amazing and I started celebrating. The whistle blows. Coach Brooks pulls me out of the game. As he sat me on the bench, he instilled a very valuable lesson. Which is you can win without setting yourself up for future failure. “We may have to face them in the playoffs,” he said. “We don’t want to give them more motivation.”
Coach Brooks was a fierce competitor. He started for West Virginia University and was an All-Conference player in the Big East as a 6’6 white guy. He was unique. He once kicked a basketball in anger at practice and then immediately apologized. He was the first “older brother” I had that I chose that was not biologically related to me. It created high expectations for both sides. He saw a lot of me in him, especially regarding potential. He set a goal for me for the season: 4 to 6 points and 3 rebounds a quarter. I came pretty close to achieving it.
There were 127 kids in my graduating class. Everyone was leaving for greener pastures. They all knew where they were going and it was listed in the handout at graduation. One says Harvard. Another the Naval Academy. Another Virginia Tech. Mine says Fork Union. Yep, the very school I was graduating from. I was coming back to the military academy for a post-graduate year.
I remember being grateful Coach Arritt was giving me a spot on his team. There was hesitancy because I’d have to go from being a day student to living there as a cadet. As a post grad, you attend classes just like a high school student. But the structure was a one-subject plan. One subject all day for seven weeks. Five classes in a year. The one subject plan was perfect for improving SAT scores, or taking a class you failed. I took two sessions of SAT prep with Col. Dennis Brown where all we did was prep. My scores went up 300 points just knowing how to take the test. Col. Brown was one of the most brilliant and loving teachers I’ve ever known. He’d take the practice SAT in English along with us and get a perfect score. But not tell anyone.
First post grad year, 2003-2004, I woke up with a sore throat. First practice, something was physically way off. My closed throat was diagnosed as mononucleosis and a throat infection. It hospitalized me in our campus infirmary for five weeks where I basically withered away. I was 185 to 190 pounds going in. When I finally got out of bed, I was 152. I took three Percocet every three and half hours to be even able to swallow applesauce.
And that was the first time I ever planned how to kill myself.
Both times in my life when I realistically thought of ending my life, I thought: if I don’t die what am I going to do then?
I don’t know if it’s a lucky or an unlucky thing to have your persona shattered. But when I stood in front of the mirror and saw my body withering away, the only thing I had wanted in life, to escape Buckingham County, was disappearing before my eyes. I was becoming a skeleton. Going from the potential of being a recruited Division I basketball player to being barely able to make it from the hospital bed to the bathroom.
I was shattered.
In the south you have these pine trees everywhere. On the first floor, where my room was, I looked out at these pine trees. On the other side were the blacktopped basketball courts. Could I jump through the glass and let the shattered window panes cut me and let me bleed out?
I had to reconcile this lost dream and I didn’t see any hope. I had just turned 19. It must have been a month and a half later my throat issues had calmed down. I was able to go back and practice again. At the start of the season we always scrimmaged Oak Hill, one of the top high school basketball programs nationally. Carmelo Anthony went there. It was loaded with fifth year seniors and regular seniors. It was truly a basketball factory, sponsored by the Jordan brand. It was the North Carolina or Duke of high school basketball. Coach Arritt wanted to see us against the best. I was able to practice enough to get in the game against point guard Rajon Rondo and forward Josh Smith. Rondo wound up with an NBA Championship with both the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers and Smith went on to win the slam dunk contest when he played with the Atlanta Hawks. Smith was drafted out of high school six months after I played against him. Playing against them was humiliating but also created a fire to not give up. I may have gotten in 5 to 7 minutes. I was so emaciated, I was nowhere ready to compete. Trying to guard Rondo, I came off the help side to greet him at the rim. He just he-maned me with his right hand, creating six feet of space and had an easy left-hand layup. He was 6’4 with a 7-foot wingspan. I was immediately substituted for. I was embarrassed at the degree of which he was a better player but a fire was lit to let this not be the last chapter in my basketball journey. Once we got back to campus, Coach Arritt came to me and said I needed to take the whole year off. And that academic year came to an end.
I spent the rest of the year rehabbing at home, getting a job, not knowing when I left if I’d have a spot next year on the team. But pretty soon after being home, Coach Arritt called and said why don’t you come back again? A couple of things had happened. When my tonsils were taken out, I was able to put on weight and muscle. I came back for my second post grad year a man.
There had been only one team that recruited me during my sickness year, and that was the Air Force Academy. Both of my PG years, 03-05, Air Force had been a top 25 team and made the NCAA tournament two years in a row. The AF Academy was a legit basketball presence. The one school I had wanted to go to was University of Pennsylvania. Coach Arritt took me up there. He was friends with Coach Dunphy.
Something I didn’t know was how good I would be when I came back for the second PG year. Real good. Coach Arritt had shielded me from a lot of stuff. He was grooming me for life, a blessed life. He knew I had the grades and skills to get into many schools, even Ivy League, but he knew I was a broken kid who could get lost in the wrong program. He knew what schools would be best for me, and never even told me there had been ACC interest. As a team we finished 28 and 2, number 2 or 3 in the country, losing our last game of the season with a shot at sharing the number one spot in the country to finish out the year. I had pulled a groin, which meant while I became a ranked player nationally during the first half of the season, I played limited minutes over the second half. During the season, while injured, I committed to the Air Force Academy. They had continued to recruit me. I looked on it as an opportunity to play high major Division I basketball, with a Princeton style offense which I knew I fit into. Also, Air Force was going to pay for law school.
The reality of coming back for the PG years had more to do with pleasing Coach Arritt and honoring his belief in me than it had to do with wanting to play Division I basketball. Deep down, somewhere in the darkest recesses of my being, I knew I didn’t like basketball or having to play it. My body knew this reality as well and would do its best to show me the error of my choices through the gastrointestinal system and regular issues I had with it throughout my time competing at high levels of the sport. Your stomach is a natural truth teller. Most people have an inner psychic and for most it’s located right below the chest.
I stopped having fun with the sport once I realized it was hard work to be good at it. I stopped wanting to play the sport when I stopped getting praise for just dribbling a basketball. Nevertheless, I accepted a scholarship to college at the D1 level with the hopes to put aside all of the doubt about wanting to continue playing.
Almost immediately after the death of my father, the only thing ever on my mind, except for brief respites with girls, was an agony in searching for truth. Almost every waking hour was spent either praying to God about why I was here and the point of everything or spent mad at God for the life I was currently living. All in all, at the time, I didn’t like being a kid, nor a teenager. I always felt like life was going to take place away from teenage years and not amongst the life of someone just able to drive and still attending biology class. Although my story may be better or worse than others reading this with regards to life’s circumstances, and I’m not covering the full gambit here in this writing as to the traumas totally discovered. What I now know about growing up that was different from almost every other child on this planet, was the constant dialogue I had with God about life, the constant need for answers to the holes found within the Bible and its corresponding religion, and the reasons for death and life that were constantly present within daily mental discourse which always came up short of making sense.
Once making it to the age of 18, I started shifting in my approach to God, and I stopped praying to the Creator out of anger and spite. I instead started a journey of interest in the occult and praying directly to my father to make a connection. I grew interested in spirits, angels, demons and the afterlife, but from the vantage point of curiosity and not deliverance. I had moments of genuine experience with a world outside of my daily life during these pursuits, and enough spooky moments over time to limit my desire to continue being exposed to what is usually left unseen. Always close to my mind was God, and I was always working an angle to know more about truth and life, about why I was here on this planet, and what the point of this life was all about. There was constantly something within my being that knew I was here for something other than what I could put into words or dared allowed to become a reality. It wasn’t that I knew I was destined for great things as much as I had hopes I would do something to change the world for the better. I looked for love in any place I thought could provide it, but always came back thirsty for another source and outlet for greater love and further intensity of spirit.
I started dabbling in drugs and alcohol after graduating high school but before leaving for college. I was having sex with anyone I could find, and I was starting to not necessarily drift away from God, but more be ashamed to approach God, all the while wanting more and more answers to questions that had been present for many years up until this point.
Just before I left for college, I paid one last visit to my grandparents to say goodbye, and while there I decided to also say goodbye to a close friend of theirs who lived across the street who had also been a part of my life since I could remember. Granny Doris, as I called her. It was purely out of affection and I could tell she appreciated it. She was the only person I knew who felt truly godly to me other than my grandmother. But Granny Doris had a different aura to her, something magical and even close to God. She was spooky. In a good way. She was someone I respected and loved, but someone I kept some distance from because of her obvious proximity to divinity. What I know now is she was unconditional love personified. And when someone is unconditional love as a level of consciousness, they are used within the world in a different way than most on the earth. They’re saints. They’re life-changers. They’re connected. And they have a connection which is them and not because of them.
As I made my way over to see her, not more than a week before leaving town for good and possibly never coming back, I had no idea what was to come next, nor how it would change the course of my life forever. I always went to her back door. On this day with each step, the title of the book “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” is an apt way to describe how I felt. Except, it was more akin to a bearable lightness of being. It was a beckoning. A pulling sensation. A knowingness of “I have to go here.” If you’ve had that feeling of, “I don’t know why I’m going here, but I have to go here,” you have some idea of what was taking place.
I could have classified the previous ten years since losing my father as an unbearable burden of being. I can feel even to this day, the sensation of taking those steps and almost everything about that night. I moved past my grandparents’ house and down the sidewalk adjacent to the main road they lived on. I crossed the road and started down the sidewalk in front of her house. I walked up her driveway towards the house gleeful and full of what felt to be increasing joy, and then moved my hand to knock on her door. As my hand went to knock, the door opened and there she was, my other granny, standing in the dimly lit room she used as a sun porch, but which at night held little light, save whatever sidelamp she had on.
As long as I knew her, we used the sunporch for conversations. Only one other time in my life had I seen other parts of her home, and it was the night I stayed with her before my father’s funeral. However, on this night, she ushered me in with a smile and moved me right along to another part of her house known as the formal living room. For those of you who are not familiar with the customs of the South, every traditional family incorporates a “formal living room.” No TV. Usually a fire place. Obviously opulent. Where shoes were never worn. Whose chairs were rarely sat on. And which was rarely used.
I knew as we walked back into her home that something was already different about this evening. And it wasn’t just because the door opened as I began to knock, or because I felt lighter in spirit just walking over to see her, or because we were entering a part of her home I had never spent time in before. It was because her manner and complexion were different from any other time I had seen her. Her face was angelic, her aura was radiant, and the moment we sat down together – she in a single high-back chair and I, separated by a coffee table, seated on a wooden-armed double-seated couch, which someone who bought their furniture in the ‘70s would have called a love seat and asked specifically for the wooden arms – a smile arose not only over my face but over my entire being.
As we smiled at one another, the mood of the room grew intimate and the light grew ominous in a good way. I can’t remember exactly the words used to start the conversation but what came next was apparently the reason I felt convicted earlier to go see her. Once pleasantries were exchanged and niceties conveyed, the conversation took on a different caliber of importance and the light in the room grew dense with love and a growing radiance of perfected presence. The room was literally changing before my very eyes, and not in a way where one grows accustomed to changing light from leaving a darker area, but in a way where the room was starting to glow with what felt like omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence.
Somewhere in the sensation of the evening, as the light changed and the mood lightened towards being surrounded by a presence of God I had never before felt, the movement of my lips and hers stopped taking place, and our conversation became one of the energies of our souls communicating without the use of either mouth or voice box. As a question would arise from within my being, it would be answered from within hers. As questions would cease from my angle, from her beingness came the request for further questions to be asked, which created the next question to present itself. I remember distinctly noticing throughout our time together that her lips weren’t moving, but her gaze was fixed upon mine and a smile was permanently gracing the face of a heavenly presence.
The room continued to transcend the energy most people commonly feel when going about life, and the light grew more abundant and all encompassing. I felt relaxed and almost coddled in the grace of the room and the presence of what I could not deny was some aspect of divinity. God, the infinite creator, was present in a way not known until that point. But the fullness of God was not present, nor can it be while still attached to this body. But some aspect of God was more than abundant and filling me up simultaneously with honesty, love, and an openness to ask any question that came into awareness.
I asked about life and death, my father, the meaning of life and existence, and eventually about why I was here on this planet and what my purpose for this life was. Intermixed between questions and answers were directive statements towards my being of what I was doing to create distance between myself and the creator, and what the future was to hold in the weeks and months and years to immediately follow the conversation.
I was told about my purpose for being alive, and never during the time spent with God that night through the presence of someone whose life was dedicated to God, was there ever a moment of disbelief about what was transpiring, or what the moment at hand represented against previously held beliefs about the reality of God being real or fake. There was no attachment to time or space, and until the time with God in this way came to an end, there was no exchange with time as it was before walking into this room. As the final question was answered and the last statement of internal prophecy was summoned forth, the room grew quiet again as the light that once filled the place in an unimaginable way subsided into the regular glow of proper side lamps.
As the room became just based on the awareness of two people seated facing one another, the conversation came to a sweet but final end. As we walked to the back door for me to exit, Granny Doris was back to who she was, a sweet and love-filled, godly woman who wore a youthful smile on her face with glad tidings to see me off.
I left her home that night and walked slowly back towards my biological grandparents’ home. I knew life would never be the same for me again. How could it? God just talked to me, and all the questions I ever had were answered. I continued to make my way across the street and onto my family’s property, and as I walked through their front door, I was left speechless about what had transpired.
As the night continued to move along, I have little recollection about how the evening ended and what conversations I had with my Granny and Pop about what happened, except I know I didn’t tell them, and I never told them about the angel who lived across the street, nor about the conversation with some aspect of divinity that would wind up changing the course of my life from that night forward.
The next day I awoke and felt changed but also had a lingering question born into awareness that would mark the beginning of the next 12 years of my life: how do I do what I’m here to do, and be who I’m here to be, if I don’t have any answers worth giving to people?
One thing that was shared with me that night was the reality that the school I was leaving for was not my final destination, and that I wouldn’t be there long. This turned out to be excruciatingly true, and within the next two months I had not only left for college but returned from it as well.
Over the course of the next decade-plus of life, I chased after answers to new questions, questions born out of an internal knowingness about my path for this life long-term. I felt haunted by knowing the future as time went on because I never felt ready or capable of being what I was here to be.
I felt lost because the answers to the questions I had were not found within the religion I grew up with, nor were they to be found by living a life of quiet desperation. I was a man with a flag but no hill to plant it on. I wandered aimlessly out in the wilderness for many years, searching high and low for truth and often times winding up face down in a puddle of my own vomit and tears. My searching was always there but the fear of never reaching the life purpose this time around became like a heavy noose carried around the neck, and over time, instead of righteously surveying the world for answers to questions, I chose to hide from even looking for the answers for fear I’d never find them.
I started a career as a professional womanizer and drinker. I started other careers as a pothead and a liar. I spent days and weeks trying to wrestle with the reality that I knew my purpose, but would never live up to it. I was scared, fearful of the present, the future, the past, and everything in-between.
I made deals with God along the way about doing something else instead with career choices, and each time I tried to hide within the confines of a decent life, one the world would hold as worthy. I would self-destruct or lose that opportunity because it wasn’t the final place for me the whole time, only unrecognized stepping stones. God continued to do for me what I was unable to do for myself, which was keep me moving towards a determined end where choice would be made simple, and in the meantime experience all that the world had to offer so that the answer to the final question would be one of knowingness and not one of wondering further.
Finally, years later, I found myself on the fateful night of choice in a living hell, separated from love, from God, from humanity, and in a place where an eternity separated from hope felt real and overwhelming. I had chased the answers to the questions about God far and wide out in the world and come up empty, depressed, beaten down and close to death. My study of this world had come to an end, and either I was going to graduate back into grace and acceptance, or I was going to die and miss the chance at redemption. I had reached a final jump-off point where I was now a full member of the world, alcoholic and all, and either the world was going to be the end of the road or God was going to be the choice made after hiding for 12 years.
On July 4th, 2017, time stopped somewhere in the early evening hours and God showed up in a way that was undeniable yet again. After years on the lamb with regards to living out a higher purpose for being in the body, I came face-to-face with a choice, a choice which presented itself other times before, but this time when the choice was presented there was a knowingness it would be the last of its kind: choose Life and another way or choose death and have to do it all over again. Subjectively, time stopped, and the world phased out of focus, the body stopped feeling and the mind was no longer obeying any thought patterns related to previous moments leading up until right then. As vision was reduced to a single internal knowingness without any doubt presenting itself, an inaudible voice came from within screaming softly that the moment at hand is vastly different from the moments catalogued prior. What the moment and knowingness presented was simple, but what was a person to do with the ultimatum built on a current foundation of denying a better way to live so far?
To set the context for the immenseness of this choice, it is vital to know that after 12 years of running from God, I was now a raging alcoholic. Anyone who has gone through a 12-step program is familiar with this definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Anyone who has battled addiction of any sort in their lives fully knows the veracity of this definition. For me, God’s grace that night lifted the veil of insanity and allowed me to see what my life had truly become. At this point drinking wasn’t fun anymore. In truth it hadn’t been for some time. Those days were long gone if they had ever truly been there at all. In had gotten to the point where drinking became medicine to hide from the constant fears the mind managed to manifest once drinking no longer became just a casual past-time. I was drinking because I feared success, but not success in the way most people would think about it. I feared the type of success that meant I knew what my purpose in life was and part of the reason I was alive, but I couldn’t imagine ever living up to it, or for more clarity, I had no clue how to get from point “A” where the truth was known, to point “B,” where the truth manifested as reality.
Twelve years almost to the day after seeing God for the first time through Granny Doris, I had come full circle to a time paused once again by the presence of God posing this question of life or death. Despite the many times I chose differently in the past, this time with an equally reckless abandon, I was ready to give life one last shot and accept God’s outstretched arm. That night, I chose Life over the world, Life over insanity, Life over death and what vanished immediately was a desire to take another drink or make any further decisions rooted in fear. And just like that, based on a single, divinely inspired choice, I was transported back in time to a reality where life in front of me was worth more than what got left behind.
Almost instantly, once saying yes to a higher truth and good-bye to a life of hiding, the same connection to a wordless divinity felt all those years prior re-presented itself as if no time passed at all, as if forgiveness isn’t attached to time but outside of it just waiting on its string to be pulled. The gift of instant forgiveness erased all of the time running, and all that was left was the sense in the immediate timeframe that not only had God not gone anywhere nor forgotten about me, but grace was always there with an outstretched hand just waiting for me to accept the handshake.
On July 4th, 2017, God pulled me from the depths of a living hell to the heights of a subjective reality where love was more present than at any other time in memory. That night, for the first time in many years, the clouds above my head parted ways and allowed sunshine to sparkle unabated, and for the first time in a long while, all the fears that filled the mind and body earlier in the previous hours, days, weeks, months and years were gone. Ultimately replaced with the subjective experience of warmth on the soul and daylight on the face of life yet to be lived.
Unlike other times in the past when I pleaded for God’s help with the outcomes of poor decision making, and then after experiencing some relief as a result went right back to making the same poor decisions, this time I put resolve and promise into action steps when presented with Life as an actionable choice. I found myself immediately moving towards help in the form of a 12-step program. Along with the 12-step group, I found the written works of a couple people important for the next phase of life’s journey: Byron Katie and Dr. David R. Hawkins.
Byron Katie was the first author I found in the self-help world that allowed me to put her work to practice, and the outcome of doing so was a major revelation: we have thoughts but we’re not our thoughts. Quickly, what followed was the realization that we have a mind but we’re not the mind, and if these two revelations were correct, logically what followed is that we have a body but we’re not the body. And in cascading fashion, many other similar revelations sprang forth into consciousness leaving me as the host effortlessly moving towards higher and higher truths.
Dr. Hawkins became my greatest spiritual teacher next to what would come later in the recognition and appreciation for Jesus and Krishna. Dr. Hawkins had done something no other person had throughout history, he created a quantifiable chart of understanding consciousness (the characteristic of God which we call omniscience), and with the help of his teachings and the use of his chart, I began charting my own progress from hell to heaven and applying what was learned into my own knowingness of the world around me and how it works.
As the magic of working the 12-steps began manifesting within my physical and mental life, spiritually I was experiencing something growing more and more powerful within every daily experience. Love was filling me up. From July 4th, 2017, until the moment of writing this, life has morphed from danger to physical life to the regular experience and witness of God as imminent. What I feared impossible at age 20, fully manifested as reality on March 21st, 2018, when the full realization of God as Self set in for the first time. Life was never about physicality again, nor was it about fear in any form or love limited in any way. The peace of inner ecstasy that was ushered into being was unmistakable, and the way in which I now operated within the world made it clear subjectively that the reality of God was self-evident and self-revealing, omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. At this point, it is not pertinent to elaborate on the states of consciousness you’ll find escalating within this book, or the states of enlightenment that became a reality over 2018 and beyond, but suffice to say, subjectively, life today is nothing like life before March 21st, 2018, just like life on July 3rd, 2017, was nothing like life on July 4th, 2017.
Consciousness went from experiencing hell as an experiential reality, to experiencing life in such a way no limits remained, and where heaven is a known reality while on this plane of existence as well as a reality when one leaves the physical body behind. Consciousness didn’t stop evolving in an upwards trajectory after the initial onslaught of higher truth settled in as a new subjective reality, but from the undeniable physical and spiritual sensations of all-encompassing ecstasy that goes along with Satcitananda, or the realization of God as Self.
Now, every moment of every day is without definition or attachment, perfect in nature, without wants, desires, cravings, fears, or poor decision-making fueling the next highest choice. Today, like sages who have reported similar states of old, I can attest to the fact that at a certain level of consciousness, the reality of divinity becomes known and not just read about, and what some would call miracles, happen regularly now as the unfoldment of every moment presenting itself anew.
Today, synchronicity and miracles are commonplace, and today, I can honestly say to all of you reading this, one has to do nothing, save regular surrender, forgive everyone for everything and witness the gratitude arising which follows, in order to have a life only dreamed about.
What was made known over time was the gift at the center of the 12-step program, and through both of Katie’s and Hawkins’s work, was the power of surrender, and by which the mind/ego can be transcended, leaving only truth as observable, and along with it a constant and genuine happiness mixed with perfected contentment. Today, joy is present as a continual reality, and it’s not conditioned upon someone else’s response to me or how the world treats this personage, it’s an internal joy present in knowingness which transcends understanding. Today, there is no longer a person present separate from anyone else or the world around me, what is present is an awareness that enlightenment is the byproduct of setting one’s intent north and chasing after God through the continual surrendering over of the lesser for the greater. A person doesn’t become enlightened, just like a person isn’t their body. Enlightenment sets in like a condition. But unlike a physical condition, enlightenment is experienced as the lens through which reality is witnessed and observed. No person is enlightened, but once enlightenment sets in, what someone in this state of consciousness knows is there is no individual person present, now or anytime in the past. Just as known is that God is not somewhere else in the universe, but everywhere in the universe at the same time, as well as being that which writes these words now. And no different from that which reads these words now.
God is imminent as well as transcendent, everywhere, all things, all the time. God is here and there, not just over there observing over here. God is not singular and in a single place awaiting a single time. God is plural and all the time, just in varying degrees of truth present within subjective realities. What we all are, as much as can be described through words, can be understood in what follows here: I, in greater or lesser degree of intensity.
Today, I, like you, are a degree of consciousness being expressed in greater or lesser quantities of love and truth present. I am also what you see me as, but just like God, we’re much more than what we usually see when we look out into the world. I am a byproduct of a surrendered life and of God doing for me what I could not do for myself: delivering me from lost to found, hurt to free, pained to healed, and now a mirror for the world to see God smiling back at them. I am an example for everyone reading this book that you are never too far gone, too far out of reach, too far left or right of center, never outside of God’s love. If I can have a witness of God today the way it manifests itself, so can you. No matter the hell you may find yourself in. No matter the miles you have traveled for answers to some of life’s biggest questions. Truth and grace are just a choice away.
…Why am I sharing this message?
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At twenty years old, on the night described in a previous section where God showed up and answered my questions, I was told what my reason for being in human form was for this lifetime: I am to be a preacher unlike any other preacher, with a message unlike any other message.
The reason this message in book form is being shared is not because I’m better than another person, but because of the life that has been lived so far to deliver knowingness of God as the reality of existence. Because of my experience of life, I’m now ready to share with you the truth found along the way so that your life may see the same opportunity to manifest a genuine experience of God as real and as imminent. The moment God is no longer a wish or a hope to be true, but actually experienced in your own reality, your life will never be the same again. This book is a statement to the world that it’s time to promote truth on a larger scale if I’m here to live out the answer from God as to why I’m here.
This book is not the only thing you should ever read to find out truths related to the Almighty, but this book is born out of the reality that I spent this lifetime chasing after the answers that have worked together to create the basis for this book, as well as the truth from a firsthand witnesser of the truth found within this book.Nothing within these pages is not from a place of experiential, witnessed, or observable lens. Nothing within this book is based on what someone else says about God as the merit for it being shared. Nothing in this book is based on anything other than a firsthand experience with divinity daily.
I was not ready to start a public ministry of the kind that is beginning with this title and others, as well as other creations taking shape, until I could speak authentically about a relationship with God that transcends even religion. I am not your pathway to God, this book is not the only pathway to God, as you yourself are already both without this work, even though you don’t truly know that yet. This book’s only aim is to remind you of something you already know but may have forgotten: God is everything, including you, not judging or condemning, always present waiting on your choice to experience the reality of ultimate truths.
I’m sharing this message because it’s time to share this message, and because I’m here on this earth to share this message. Throughout my life, I would find worthy answers out in the world not from someone else relaying stories told by someone else or experienced by someone else at another time, but when someone spoke from their own experience. I found truth and lasting change when I stopped looking outside for the answers about God and started diving deeply into the internal being of what we all are, and from which answers came as a reflection of this pathway of surrender – which is what’s shared here. This message and this book are truthful words strung together to deliver the reader from having to read about what someone may think to be true or what someone hopes is true, to a place of being witnessed experientially as true for themselves. If the work within this book had the power to deliver me from hell to Heaven in this world while still with a body, I know it has the same power in and of itself to do the same for you.
Because the same truth that I now witness is the same truth that all other beings of shared consciousness have witnessed, it is now time to speak about such truths in a dialogue fitting my story of shared realizations of God and how they came about. This book and its message are being shared because you need it on your journey of Self-discovery as much as I needed what’s within it throughout my journey of discovering God as the Self.