Chapter One

The Meltdown

"Other people have what they need, I alone possess nothing. I alone drift about, like someone without a home. I am like an idiot, my mind is so empty."

The Tao

The most crucial and profound moment in the whole of my life was when I was suddenly confronted with what I thought was about to be my own death. Was I to trust and let go into the unknown? Or was I going to fearfully hold on until the bitter end?

It was August 15, 2005, a normal working day for me in my home office. As I was hanging up the phone after speaking to a business client, suddenly, and for no apparent reason, I began to cry and could not stop. A strong sensation, similar to that of pins and needles and rushing water, began to move down through the top of my head and up through my arms and legs. I tried to shake it off but it would not leave me. Instead, it just got stronger and stronger. At first, I thought it might have been because I had been sitting in my chair for too long. Maybe my body had fallen asleep, or my circulation had been cut off. Whatever the reason, the sensation continued to build.

Within what seemed like only a few moments I felt as if I was under a massive waterfall. I was unable to move as the weight of the ‘water’ pounded my body and beat me to the ground. The experience became so intense that I ended curled up on the floor in the fetal position, terrified that I was about to die from either a heart attack or a stroke. After all I had accomplished throughout my life, I thought to myself, here I was now, about to die alone and bewildered on the floor. What had happened to my fantasy of going out in a blaze of glory?

As the fear of death consumed me, I began thinking about just how long it was going to take for the end to arrive. How painful was it going to be when I left this body? Was there a god who would judge me as having lived a good life? Was I destined for heaven, or wherever good boys go? Or had my self-centered existence sealed my fate in hell?

As I lay there on the floor, I could feel myself becoming paralyzed. Every part of me began to ache; it felt like every bone in my body was about to break. I moaned in agony as I rolled around on the floor, my arms and legs stiff and frozen from the force of the energy rushing through me. I had never really spent much time during my life thinking about what it might be like in that final moment. Now that it had arrived, I realized I was completely unprepared for it. I was at the absolute mercy of whatever was coming next.

In tears and terrified, I managed to crawl to the phone and attempt to call for help. It was almost impossible to dial the number because the pain in my hands was so intense. Eventually, however, I got through to my close friend Evan. After a few moments he told me that what was happening sounded more like a spiritual experience than a medical emergency. By now, my hands were so badly cramped that they stopped working, and the phone fell and landed next to my head. As I tried to keep speaking, I noticed that my friends voice was beginning to fade into the distance. The sensation of rushing water was now sending the noise of the normal, linear world far into the background.

While lying there overwhelmed by the fear of death, a passage from a Zen Buddhist text I had once read crossed my mind: “All fear is illusion, walk straight ahead.” In a last desperate attempt to somehow save myself, I began praying. I chanted the words: ‘In the name of the highest good, Thy will be done,’ over and over. Then, a moment of clarity came. I realized I had a choice. The first one was to hang on to my life for all it was worth, right up until the bitter end, in a desperate attempt to stay alive. The other option was to let go and trust in God and whatever was in store for me. I could see that I had no control over what was taking place. So I let go of existence itself, and trusted in the unknown.

Within moments, I felt like someone was wrapping a thick warm blanket around me on a cold night. It was like a profound presence was somehow communicating to me that everything was going to be alright, and to just let go and continue to surrender to what was taking place.

So surrender I did, and like a set of falling dominos, I let go of my attachment to everything I thought was real in my life. First my physical body, then the mind and all its thoughts, feelings, opinions, assessments and positions; my children, my business career, the house, the car, my friends, the fear and terror of the unknown and, finally, all I had accomplished during my short stay here on this beautiful planet. I was now ready to die in peace and acceptance.

Then as quickly and powerfully as the raging spiritual hurricane had battered my little shell of a body into the ground, it vanished. The voice in my head disappeared and everything went absolutely silent and utterly still. As I looked up from the floor, I could see what I can only describe as a living electromagnetic field of love, emanating from everything.

Was I dreaming? Had I died and gone to heaven? And if so, was someone coming to meet me at the gates? Did I pass the test?

I then noticed there was no separation between me and everything else in the room. The table, the chairs, the rug, even what I thought was my body... everything seemed to be part of the same unified thing; part of this field of love that I had been catapulted into. I was overwhelmed with a peace beyond anything one could ever imagine, ‘a peace which passeth all understanding.’ In the presence of such indescribably exquisite bliss, all I could do was cry.

The world of duality, time and location had disappeared unannounced. What seemed like movement, stopped. It became clear that nothing had any more – or less – importance than anything else. There was no longer any hierarchy or labels to the form of life. I could see myself in everything and everything shone back to me with equal power and radiance; everything vibrated with the energy of life itself. All things were in a state of absolute perfection.

It then occurred to me that a lifetime of desire, and the need for achievement and success, had disappeared too. The identity I had created over a lifetime of thinking had simply vanished. Who I thought I was, how I related to life, all my accomplishments, were now gone. Although I was aware I had a body, looking at it was just like looking at a piece of furniture; or at a toy that now moved under some kind of guiding force. Rather than identify with my body, I now simply observed it walking, talking and moving around the apartment.

There was no longer a personal ‘I.’ No longer a ‘me’ looking at a ‘you.’ Doing had been replaced by ‘being.’ The noise of life faded into the background and was replaced by an utterly profound, infinite peace, stillness and silence. This new dimension became my new reality.

The beauty of this state was so intense that I continued to cry almost every day for the next year.

Being catapulted so dramatically and unexpectedly into this profound stillness made it very hard for me to function, or, indeed, do anything at all. Even the smallest of tasks became cumbersome and difficult. There were long periods when I could not eat, wash, move – or even speak. I became unshaven, pale and lost so much weight; my clothes began to hang off me. I remember passing the mirror one day and wondering who this skinny person was in the apartment with me. It took a few moments to recognize what I was  looking at – one might say it was the body formerly known as me that was now walking around the apartment.

Leaving the apartment became almost impossible. I found myself just sitting for hours on end, catatonic. During this time, my son once paid me a visit, just to then point out to me that I was actually drooling. My reply was: “Son, get used to it.”

You could say I was in a state of exquisite shock. A whole lifetime of endless thoughts, opinions, self-criticism, evaluation and assessment of myself and my place in the world, no longer existed. It was extraordinary to realize how much stress this relentless internal monologue creates – and how it separates us from life itself.

After almost a year of being in this blissfully mindless state, I tried to get back into the world by taking walks. I would manage to make my way to the local shops where I would sit for hours on end, watching people going about their daily business. One day, while walking through the bread section in my local supermarket, I noticed yet again that everything was in a profound state of perfection. All things (form) became utterly sacred. The bread aisle of Sainsbury’s had suddenly transformed into a temple of divine eternal beauty. The experience was so overwhelming that all I could do was stand there, stunned, as tears of gratitude streamed down my face.

I must have looked like one of those disheveled old men who shuffle around in their slippers to the shops, looking completely lost. The kind of person many of us silently laugh at as a ‘care in the community’ case, living on government welfare. Goodness knows what the other shoppers thought of this scruffy, middle-aged man in floods of tears, while they cautiously reached over me for a French stick and bag of rolls. Eventually the manager appeared and gently escorted me out of the store. (Life’s embarrassing, then you die).

***

One day I managed to make it out of the apartment to the communal garbage bins. The area was fenced off and as I opened the gate and walked in, I was struck by the beauty of the waste all around me. I stood there just soaking up the radiance of everything in view. A visit to the bin area was just another opportunity to experience the perfection of all things.

As I wandered around in this state of ‘oneness,’ feeling overwhelmed with the radiant beauty of life, I would often see people moving along the streets as if they were in some kind of trance, like half-dead zombies in a bad B movie. I could see the internal dialogue on their faces and how lifetimes of thought had literally shaped their bodies and the circumstances of their lives.

I realized that nothing was actually ‘happening.’ Whatever did emerge was only as a result of a certain set of conditions. Just like when it rains it can only do so when all the conditions needed for rain to happen are in place. Then we witness what the conceptual mind calls and experiences as rain.

I needed very little food or sleep and could go for days at a time without any of it. One morning after a light rest, I got up and sat on the edge of the bed. I then suddenly realized that it was dark outside. The whole day had slipped away without any realization of time whatsoever. All I could do was climb back into bed and lay there in the timeless bliss of reality. With the illusion of time and location now shattered, everything was emerging without sequence, beginnings or ends.

When I did get up, walking was difficult. It felt like my body had aged a hundred years. Some days all I could do was make it from the sofa to the hallway. I would find myself standing there in a timeless dimension, gazing at the beauty of the woodwork, or marveling at some other small detail. I had the sense that all objects could actually communicate to me, and that they were aware of my presence.

No matter what I was witnessing, whether it was the stunning architecture of an old cathedral or the town dump, it all radiated the beauty of life with the same vitality. You see, the mind can only function within certain rules and parameters. It needs to label things, put things into time and space, and see life in terms of opposites and from a perspective of separation (a ‘you’ and a ‘me’). When the mind disappears, then the way it operates disappears along with it.

***

Then, about thirteen months into this blissful unity with all things, I began to notice the return of thoughts, judgments and opinions. The more they filled my head, the darker my world became. The still silent awareness that had overtaken my life now started to move into the background once again. As it did, the beautiful, radiant color and profound peace of God went with it.

Looking back, I can clearly see that this was the ego-mind returning, trying to reclaim authorship of my life. The trouble is, when the ego senses its own annihilation, it generates fear, huge amounts of fear. It marked the beginning of what I can only describe as a journey into the deepest depths of hell; an endless pit of terror. Why had I been abandoned by God, hung out to dry and slung back into the realm of mental suffering? What had I done to deserve such a fate? I felt completely and utterly alone.

I would awake crying at five in the morning, gripped with unknown terror, desperately clutching my six-year-old daughter’s teddy bear. This descent into darkness continued to deepen day after day for what seemed like forever. Every morning I would awake into the same terrifying fear and mental isolation until death began to look like a viable option; a way to put an end to all this suffering. It felt like some evil black force that was driving me insane. (The Jedi in me was now losing out to the dark side.) I had been tested many times throughout my life but nothing that could match the power of this place.

I believe it was Dante who wrote the phrase: ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here.’ During my darkest days I often wondered if he had been to the same place, whether he had managed to get out – and, if so, how on earth did he do it. I was convinced the darkness was permanent. All my cries for help and prayers for salvation seemed to be falling on deaf ears. This to me was hell at its very worst.

I was alone, lost in the deepest recesses of my mind. I realized my ego would rather throw me off a bridge than surrender to God again.

In desperation I would call out to the one or two people I knew who had some understanding of what I was going through; who had been through spiritual crises of their own. I would weep down the phone to them for hours at a time, terrified to hang up and be left alone with myself once again. When I finally did end the call I would crawl back into bed for another night of terror. I would often awake in the night with what felt like bolts of lightning shooting up my arms. Then that sense of rushing water and pins and needles would begin crashing down upon me again. I was so frightened by this point that I would jump out of bed and shake my limbs in a vain attempt to make it all go away. Not that it ever worked. When I got back into bed the rushing sensation would just slowly begin moving through my body again.

It meant that I went for days at a time without sleep. It was like being electrocuted all the time. The power surges would pound my body relentlessly, seemingly with no concern for me at all. What was left of my mind just could not accept what was happening.

If you do happen to find that one day all thought vanishes forever, then God bless you. Please, enjoy the ride. But if your mind does happen to come back, then good luck. When the ego-self realizes that its days are numbered, it tends to fight back – viciously in my case – and will do anything to hold onto its domain. What it doesn’t understand is that it can still keep its job. But the new deal is that it gets demoted from being the C.E.O. of the corporation to the floor sweeper. In my ego’s case, that new position was totally unacceptable.

I had unbelievable cravings. I would eat bags of sweets followed by buckets of strong coffee, in an attempt to try and make contact with my body again. None of it ever worked though. I had become an ‘it’ with no location in time or space, all of which contributed to my ego-mind’s sense of complete alienation from life. I could see that this ego was not going to give up so easily. It was putting up the fight of a lifetime, terrified of being obliterated completely.

Many people ask me how I eventually managed to integrate my mind and spirit back into a functioning unity. To tell you the truth, I am not sure myself. I do know, however, that it included every grain of wisdom that I had gleaned from a life of hard knocks and over twenty-five years of personal development and transformational work. This, along with a stint in the army, the training of some of the world’s top spiritual and life mentors and the blessing of many of my great friends, helped pull me through during my darkest moments. The path to enlightenment requires true self-leadership.

Today I can see that one needs to be physically, mentally and emotionally fit to even attempt major shifts in consciousness like this. The intensity is such that I would not be surprised to hear that it has killed many people already. As for the support needed afterwards, well, here in the West there isn’t really any. There may be in India and places like that but I still believe that, wherever you are, finding the right people to support you can be a difficult and lengthy process. For the most part, you are on your own.

Conventional medicine has very little to offer cases like myself, apart from being medicated, hospitalized, and committed to a psychiatric ward. I have nothing against the numerous benefits of modern medicine but this approach could lead to much bigger problems later on. The one thing that kept me going was knowing that what was happening to me was spiritual not medical, and that it required a spiritual solution.

Financially things had become bleak. I had by now not been able to work at full capacity in almost two years. I had children, a mortgage, a failed marriage to support plus the rent on my apartment, food, school bills and all the other overheads it takes to function in today’s Western world. To this day, I have no idea how some of those costs got paid.

I do remember that at one point my landlady actually lent me two months’ rent so she wouldn’t have to evict me. I honestly never thought I would work again. For someone who had previously been so relentless at chasing and living the dream, and earning top whack to boot, the sense of hopelessness about my ability to provide just exacerbated my feeling of despair.

***

It was during this period that a miracle happened. I got a call offering me the first piece of work I had been given in a long time. Incapable as I had become, I pulled myself together and headed into town to meet a new client. It was a hot August London day. The Underground trains were jam-packed with tourists and people from all walks of life making their journeys across town. As I was jostled onto the train, I could feel the fear and terror descending upon me again. Panic rose in my chest, and all I could think about was how the hell I was going to get out of the carriage so I could breathe again.

Then suddenly I felt the warm touch of someone’s hand in mine. Startled, I looked down to see a beautiful little girl, about seven years old. She had mistaken my hand for that of her father’s, the man standing next to me. She never looked up but the feel of that hand in mine was like a blessing from an angel, one who had come down from heaven to let me know that everything was going to be alright; and even though this was my darkest hour, I was being carried. It was as if God was saying: “I know I am kicking your ass here JC, but trust me. Surrender to it all, and I will carry you.”

This was the turning point. A new sense of power and confidence came over me; and things began to change for the better. Bit by bit, with every day that passed, the sense of fear and despair began to lift. Slowly, I began to feel human again. I started getting out more and telling people about my experience. I scoured the internet, asking if anyone knew of other people who had been through the same kind of experience as mine. I visited spiritual communities looking for anyone who I could relate to. Anyone who could sit with me and say: ‘Yes. I have been there. This is what you can expect; and this is what you can do to manage your way to wholeness again.’

It took me over four years to find a balance between the world of form and the formless bliss of divinity. It is only now many years later that I can look back in clarity and bring you my experience in a way that I hope deepens your sense of peace and serenity in life.

I am told that there are no mistakes in God’s world. My journey has been my journey. Yours, I am certain, will be different. I wish you a gentle and empowering transition into the light.

JCMac

jcmacmail@gmail.com
youtube: jcstacimac 

Author House Publishing

Chapter Two

Letting Go Vs Holding On


“ Enlightenment emerges in the practice

of surrender and letting go.”

JC Mac

When I look back over my life, I can see now that so much of it was about learning to let go. All the successes and failures, all the people, places and worldly experiences I had notched up on my belt, had brought me to that final door; that definitive moment when it dawned on me that I was about to leave my body and that there was no way back.

During my life I have had guns pointed at my head, smashed cars up, been in bar room brawls, lived homeless in the streets of North America, had bikers beating my door down looking for their money and seen many people die from drug and alcohol addiction. I have survived many dangerous situations. None of them, however, matched that terrifying moment that took place on August 15, 2005.

Looking back I can clearly see the process that I went through, the moment I thought I was about to die. First there was an unwillingness to accept what was happening, like a kind of denial. Then a deep sense of fear and terror began to settle in, followed by an overwhelming feeling of sadness and loss for all the things that I had not accomplished during my time on the planet. No way was I ready to go.

Could it be that God had gotten his timing wrong? Surely what was happening was meant for someone else. I mean, don’t we all think that everyone else will go before us and that we will be the last one out? Certainly not for this funny, confident, talented, middle-aged guy who, he believed, was just really beginning to get a handle on things; whose career was on the brink of greatness and accomplishment. There was a profound sense that something was wrong and that the universe had seriously screwed up.

I had lived my life like it was going to continue forever. These things happened to other people. When it came to me I had assumed I was invincible; there was nothing I couldn’t do if I put my mind to it: Success in business, relationships, being a soldier, wealth, surviving years in the street and making it out alive when many others had not. I thought I was ‘bulletproof.’ I thought I had been given the keys to the kingdom.

Denial is a tricky thing because when you are in it, you are blind to it, and once you notice you are in it, then suddenly you are out of it. The trick is to find some way to get the hell out of it before you look back and notice you missed the whole trip. Mix this in with a dose of arrogance and complacency and you have the story of my life. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that not many of us are looking forward to our last moment here on earth. None of us wake up in the morning in a deep meditative state contemplating how we are going to respond at the moment of our own death.

One of the reasons I believe we all want to avoid this topic is because we are ignorant about the facts. We are ignorant about what is really happening, not only during our lives but also at that final moment and beyond. Everyone I know, including myself, who has seen loved ones die, or has suddenly been confronted with that reality themselves, experiences a deep sense of fear and loss. My assertion is that this fear comes from ignorance about the way life works. That doesn’t mean we don’t mourn the loss of our loved ones. Of course we do. It means we can learn to mourn with the power of truth in our lives instead of feeling victimized by it.

Now given that all life is impermanent, that all of us are on the way out and we are all going to be confronted with that last moment just before we leave this earthly realm, it might just be worth knowing how things work. I firmly believe that what you decide to do at that moment will depend on how much you have practiced the truth during your life.

Let me explain. When we hold onto life it is an affirmation of fear and a lack of trust in the process. Holding onto something that is impermanent can only lead to upset and suffering at some point. Yet even though we may know this at some level, we still cling to life and many of the things in it. We cling to our possessions, our bodies, relationships, careers and families. We hold on in the wish and hope that nothing will go wrong, or that any of it will be taken from us. Life only feels finite when you are confronted with losing it. Confronting death brings one into the present moment with absolute clarity.

Now don’t get me wrong. If we were terrified of life all the time we would never get out of bed. But I am not talking about that kind of thing. What I am talking about is facing the fear of letting go; and the best way to face that fear is to know how the game of life is played and how life works. Because then and only then does one have real choice, power and trust in the matter.

If we send a message of fear and lack of trust into the field of consciousness at the moment of death, it influences the conditions that affect what happens next. Why? Because in an infinite universe that is made up of pure consciousness and is highly influenced by every thought, deed and act, the power of one thought can shift the direction and destiny of one’s whole life in the blink of an eye. In fact, your destiny just changed by reading this paragraph. Enlightenment is contingent on what you think and do. In the end you are on your own; there is no one waiting at the gate when you approach. The final surrender is between you and God, and the access to that meeting is based on conditions.

Think of it this way. When the sun shines, for example, it is because a set of conditions are appropriate for the sun to emerge at that moment. This principle applies to all things, including us. That is why I say that the choice you make at that final moment can determine the direction of what happens next. Your choice influences the conditions. Although it is not the whole story, it certainly plays a big part in one’s overall karmic destiny. Holding on sets you moving in one direction; letting go moves you in another.

So, let’s look at letting go, the difference it makes to your life and also the power it holds for you in your final moment. When you let go you are saying: ‘Everything is OK. Things are as they should be. I am safe. God is with me.’ There is a catch however, as letting go takes practice, just like everything else in life does. But when you can let go it sends a completely different message into the field of infinite consciousness; one, as I have said, that influences whatever happens next.

Don’t just take my word for it. Look at your own experience. How many times have you been attached to something, even worshipped it, and then lost it? How did that make you feel? Did you suffer? Then look at the times when you have been willing and able to walk away from something, unconcerned whether you lose it or not. Now, tell me, which approach gives you more power and freedom in life?

I believe that most of us spend most of our time holding on. We do this because no one ever taught us the benefit of letting go. I don’t remember taking ‘Letting Go 101’ in college, do you? Through sheer ignorance of the truth – and all our cultural taboos about facing death, grief and loss – we learn to grasp and cling to the many places, people and things that we believe give our lives meaning and value.

As I mentioned earlier, I have spent much, if not all, of my life with the underlying assumption that I am going to live forever. Now that I am moving well into my fifties I am beginning to see that the end is much closer than the beginning. I have been brought up in the West where matters of mortality are rarely spoken about. Most of us are completely unprepared for the loss of our loved ones, and even more unprepared for our own exit. So, knowing that we all suffer from a lack of education on the topic of life and death, I understand why we automatically hold on as tight as we possibly can, in the insane belief that we can stop the process of life and our inevitable demise. It does not matter how much plastic surgery you have done, how many vitamins you take or how often you go to the gym. You and I are all ageing and moving closer and closer to our final moment. Being unable to accept that process means we suffer.

In reality everything, including you, is in a state of perfection at every stage of existence. It is our false perceptions that are caused by, our current state of consciousness that set up this delusion, that ageing and death is a bad thing; that it is imperfect. Instead of facing the truth, we invent things like the beauty and cosmetic industry to try and deal with our delusions. In the long run, this can only lead to more suffering. The closer you are to the truth, the more peace and unity you experience with everything around you and the more effective you are in life. The further away from the truth you are, the more you suffer.

I really did think I was dying on the floor of my apartment that day in 2005. I can still, to this day, clearly remember how it happened. Everything began to slow down and, as it did, I could see my unwillingness to let go and trust in the process of what was happening. It was only after what seemed like a lifetime of terror and fear for the loss of my existence here on this planet that my many years of personal and spiritual development kicked in – and opened up the possibility of a choice. Was I going to hold on or let go? In those few seconds what arose was a level of trust and faith that I was being taken care of. It was because of this insight that I chose to surrender to the power I had, over many years, come to believe in.

I also want to point out that nothing of what I am advocating is provable in any way by the mind, science or technology. In fact, the more you use those tools, the further away from the truth you move. Linear tools do not work when navigating the non-linear world. Science cannot give you access to the spirit. This is because science is of the mind and the world of form. Spirit, meanwhile, is the world of the formless. I often say: ‘You cannot think your way to heaven.’ In fact, you cannot even experience it until you transcend the mind. Try not to think about that… Just kidding.

So, we could say life is a process of letting go; and the longer you live, the more there is to let go of. So the better you get at surrender, the easier the journey is going to be. I also want you to keep in mind that when one does let go they always do so from the present moment. It is impossible to let go from the future or the past. I say this because letting go cannot take place in a linear, sequential timeline. It is not a function of the mind but of the spirit, which is timeless and has no location in reality.

What makes people crazy is trying to think ‘letting go.’ This is like a fish with a hook in its mouth. The harder it tries to get away the deeper the hook sinks in. So the more you think, the further away you move from the truth. Most of us become willing to let go through the sheer agony of continuing to hold on.

Just as repetition is the mother of skill, letting go takes practice. The better you get at it, the more peace you experience and the less you suffer. When we can be in this moment, free of the trappings of the past and future, knowing there is never anything wrong, we have an honest shot at giving it all up. With that knowledge comes the confidence that it is safe to surrender. I love the idea that whatever is happening is exactly what is supposed to be happening at that moment. The reason that is true is in the simple fact that it is happening. Everything at every moment is normal for that moment. How could it be otherwise?

This book could be looked at in many ways: As a guide to peaceful living, or a study on the practice of living in the moment. Or how about seeing it as a book on improving your spiritual, mental, emotional and physical health? The one that drives it home for me, more than anything else, is to see it as a book on living a great life, by learning how to surrender and let go, moment to moment. Learn how to let go and you learn how to live.

So, with your permission, I would like to tell you a few stories from my life, the ones that I think contributed to setting up the conditions that took place in 2005. They are tales of how I have stumbled through life and, along the way, learned the skill of letting go, through the fine art of screwing everything up all the time. I want to share with you my journey and how, in hindsight, those lessons became great teachers; how they have taught me to let go with less and less struggle and suffering.

So please take this journey with me. Take what you can from what I have to offer and use it to improve the quality of your own life right now. Even more importantly, use it to prepare yourself for your entry through that last door, at that last moment. Remember, nobody gets out alive. The clock continues to tick for each and every one of us. If I had the choice between education and wisdom I would pick wisdom hands down. Education is the process of learning through repetition while wisdom comes from experience and is often born out of some of our biggest mistakes.

JCMac

jcmacmail@gmail.com

youtube: jcstacimac 

Author House Publishing

Chapter Three

The Brother Who Came And Went

“ The mind is like a thief.

It has spent eons mastering the art of robbing you

 of this very moment.”

JC Mac

When I was four years old my family left England to set up a new life in Canada. It was 1957 and the British Empire was looking for people who were interested in beginning a new life in this far off British colony. My father had finished his career in football and decided that a new start meant a new life. So we sailed off to this new land and ended up moving into a little square wooden box of a house in Toronto. I remember a distinct sense of possibility in the air, not only for us, but also for the many others who had made the journey to this distant land.

Brian was the firstborn, followed by my sister Teresa. Then I came along and so did Peter, Jane and Katie. We had just a couple of bedrooms, a coal fire and a small backyard that my brothers and I used to turn into an ice rink during the cold Canadian winter months. Though we never had much we were all very happy.

There were times when all six of us would have to share a bedroom, which meant it took forever for our worn out parents to get us off to sleep. I can still hear my dad screaming: “Go to bed!” It never worked though. We just laughed and kept on playing. The summers were hot and the winters were cold, but that never mattered as we all loved running around outside, no matter what the temperature. I can remember walking home from school in the blistering cold with my older brother Brian, our clothes soaking wet from playing in the snow banks.

We would come home and warm ourselves by the coal fire while watching the little black and white TV we had at the time. Wow, how that has all changed. I now struggle to drag my kids away from their Game Boys, PlayStations, computers and the 150 digital TV channels they now have. In those days there were no Starbucks, Costa Coffee, mobile phones, wireless internet connection and all the other modern day conveniences we have today. No. My mom would throw us outside in the morning and we would pile back home in the afternoon, worn out from playing with our friends throughout the neighborhood.

Brian was the oldest and we all looked up to him. As the firstborn he held high rank in the family food chain and was adored by both my parents. As we all got a little older we began finding our own friends, but would still run into each other as we all hung out in the same neighborhood. In those days, you could walk in and out of anyone’s home on our street and be guaranteed a free meal. At times you could even be disciplined by other parents who lived on the block. I can recall stepping out of line one day and being yelled at by a friend’s father. Upon telling my parents what happened they told me that I probably deserved it. And you know what? I did. Try that in this day and age of media-driven fear and paranoid parents. I can’t even take photos of my kids playing football in the school playground without a teacher running up to me, thinking I’m some kind of a perverted nut. Wow, God help us all.

The older we all got, the closer we became as a family. It was great having so many brothers and sisters in the house even if the house was small. There was always something to do or someone to play with. A few years ago an old buddy of mine posted me (not emailed – can you believe it?) a couple of photos of our old house. It was so tiny! I couldn’t get my head around how we all managed to squeeze ourselves into that little house – and live there so happily.

Just as things couldn’t get any better, Brian went up to my mom one day and complained of sores in his mouth. I don’t think my parents thought much about it at first but he continued to talk about how painful the sores were. Finally they took him to the doctor’s to see what the problem was. Us kids never heard much about what transpired during that visit. I think there was a period of waiting to hear what was going on. When the test results arrived, the doctor told my parents to take Brian straight to the hospital. So my mom packed up his things and off they went.

In my mind everything was going to be fine. Whatever the problem was the hospital would sort it out and he would be back to his old self in a flash. We would pick up where we left off and go back to having fun and living our lives. But that’s not how it worked out. After a week had passed and Brian still wasn’t home, I began to wonder what was going on.

I learned much later on that my mom and dad were up at the hospital every day sitting by his bed in support of what was happening. Just the look on their faces when they would walk through the door at night told me that something wasn’t right. But they said he was having more tests done and that he was fine. In fact, my mom would bring home drawings and pictures Brian had been making for us from his hospital bed to let us know he was doing OK.

Then one morning a few weeks into this ordeal, my dad sat us all down on the sofa. I could see my mom at the kitchen table, silent and pale. The look on their faces pretty much said it all. In disbelief I heard my dad say that my hero and big brother Brian had died that night of a blood disease called leukemia. From the day of his first check-up with the doctor to the day of his death, it had been a matter of a few weeks. One minute he was there, the next minute he was gone. Just like that.

As an adult many years later, I had the opportunity to read the nurses’ notes that were taken from Brian’s bedside. It broke my heart to learn just how fast and how devastating it must have been for my brother to die like that. His whole body was riddled with large growths and a lot of pain. There was continuous bleeding from his nose and mouth. This caused even more suffering; the lack of oxygen left him feeling like he was suffocating to death, and he was. He couldn’t eat or sleep and in those days, even though the doctors did their very best, there was little they could do apart from pain control.  One night the doctor came into Brian’s room and gave him his usual pain injection to try and help him out, then he left. Fifteen minutes later he returned and this time he administered the lethal dose that ended his suffering – and his life. Brian was fifteen. What an act of compassion and courage that must have been. If that doctor is still out there, and someday reads this book, thank you and God bless you.

Although I was only twelve at the time, I can to this day remember a sense of fear and darkness that came over me, a knowing that something had now gone very wrong with our lives. I thought these things only happened on TV or to someone else.

After my dad told us the terrible news, he got up and left the room. I don’t think he wanted us kids to see the level of grief and tears he was experiencing. We all looked at each other not knowing what to do. So we just went back to playing on the couch, trying to pretend that nothing had ever happened. But the unfathomable had happened, and as a result something inside our family froze that day. Things would never be the same again.

It wasn’t long before the whole neighborhood would hear the news and our doorstep would be covered with flowers, cards and baskets of fruit. Our little world had changed forever. To this day, the smell of roses reminds me of that time; and more specifically everyone’s inability to deal with the topic of death. The church service was overflowing with people from all over the area. I can still see my father helping my mother walk slowly down the church steps to the waiting car; the car that took us all to the cemetery where we said our final goodbyes.

Then, as if nothing had ever happened, we never spoke about my brother again. Life just went on, but not without that deep silent wound that comes with the loss of a family member. My family’s inability to accept what had happened changed everyone and everything from that moment on.

DEBRIEF

I now have children of my own. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for my parents to sit there next to their firstborn child and have to watch him suffer and die in that way.

Buddha said: “All life is illusion and children are the biggest illusion of all.” This is why I wanted this story to be the first one told in the second part of this book. It is my earliest memory of suffering and having to come to terms with the loss of someone so close to me.

As an adult, I can see now that life is always giving us the opportunity to let go. It’s just that most of us do not see it like that. As a result we learn the hard way, if we ever learn at all. I was young and too inexperienced at the time. I had no idea about the truth of how life works. It is only through a lifetime of hard knocks that I have become friendly with having to let go. Remember, we can only see what our understanding and level of consciousness will allow us to see. It is ignorance of the truth that leads to suffering in life.

I lived for years with a deep hole in my chest from the loss of my brother. I am sure the rest of my family did too. None of us had any idea of how to heal such a deep wound. We were uneducated when it came to the topic of death, yet we were all suddenly confronted with this thing that we feared the most. Fear makes us act in funny ways. The reaction for most of us is to avoid the truth and just hope that it will somehow go away and leave us alone. But it doesn’t. It hangs around in the background and haunts us. In fact, it digs deeper into our bodies and emotions and stays there until we have suffered enough to confront our fears about the impermanence of life.

At the time of writing this book, I have spent over thirty years meditating and working on my spiritual development. Although it has helped me in many ways, it still, at times, seems a long way from mastering the art of letting go and living in the moment. Even after my experience of transcending duality in 2005, the writing of this story has brought up a lot of sadness in me. Maybe we never get over it. Maybe this is as good as it gets, even when we can finally accept the way life works.

I mean if you can lose a brother, sister, mother or father and still allow whatever you feel to just be there, without the story you make up about it, you have done a much better job than me on this path. I have learned to let go only through the sheer pain of holding on, when I had no choice, when I was backed into a corner like a cut rattlesnake fighting for its life. Then, and only then, would I cave into reality. The art of letting go for most of us, is a tough lesson. Only through the relentless agony of our painful experiences do we begin to relinquish our attachments. In the final analysis there is no textbook or bulletproof way of surrendering and allowing things to be the way they are. There are many ways up a mountain and there are just as many ways to develop the skill of letting go. All are valid if it gets you through the night.

Letting go of my brother was a slow process. I don’t think my parents ever got over what seemed like a punishment from God. You see, the conceptual mind works in concepts and stories. So when something happens in life, it takes that experience and begins to add its own spin on it. The problem is that we think the story we make up about what happens in life is real. But it is not. It is only a story we invent about what happens, it is not the facts.

When this happens, life then becomes what I call a ‘real illusion.’ When we are not dealing with reality we sooner or later suffer. But when we do deal with reality, there is choice: freedom and power. We mourn the illusions of our life, always ignorant of the truth that lies in front of our very eyes.

In my business life, I often tell the story about the time I was ten and went to my first party. We were in a church basement, with all the boys on one side of the room and all the girls on the other. From what I can recall the boys were terrified of making the first move; we were all pushed up against the wall trying to look cool. My friend kept telling me to go over and ask one of the girls to dance. I finally bucked up the courage and walked across what seemed like the biggest yawning chasm in the universe. As I got to the other side, I looked one of the girls in the eye and asked if she was up for the challenge. Guess what she said? You got it. “No!” The moment she said that, my conceptual mind convinced me it was all because I had big ears, a big nose and skinny legs.

The truth is, she didn’t say anything of the sort. But that’s what I ‘heard’ and that experience influenced my behavior well into adulthood. In time, the story I made up about what happened became real and began creating my perception of life when it came to dancing with girls.

So things happen and then we make up a story about why those things happen. This is how the conceptual mind works. When it came to the death of my brother there were some pretty big stories going around. Things like: ‘God is punishing us’ and ‘God always takes the best people first and it should never have happened.’ One thing was clear: we were unable to deal with that ‘real illusion.’ My guess is if we had been able to do that, we may have been able to let go and accept what had happened sooner. My mother swallowed her grief, never spoke of it again and many years later died, I believe, of a broken heart. My father drank away his sorrows and died a few years later of the same thing.

So what did I learn from this experience? Well I can see now that no one is exempt when it comes to dying. We are all on the guest list. It happens to millions every day. Looking back, I can see that from a young age, the universe was teaching me about the power of impermanence. All things are coming and going. The more you can let everything in your life just pass through, the more freedom and peace you experience.

I have gotten better at seeing things for what they are without the story. I can report that there is a lot less suffering when we live in reality and let go of the fantasy of how we want life to be.  I have tried in vain to live out some of my fantasies of fame and glory, but if the truth were told, fantasy is not reality or we would not be calling it a fantasy. But for some crazy reason, most of us are running around thinking our fantasies are real. In fact, we are so nuts on this planet, we will even kill in the name of fantasy and delusion over the way we perceive things to be. There is no perception or fantasy in reality. Things just are what they are. In fact from a non-dual view, not only are things just what they are, nothing in existence has any real meaning, label or individual identity to it. In the presence of reality there is no story to tell. Why? Because there is no mind to tell a story. No mind, no story.

There is enormous power inherent in being able to distinguish reality from fantasy. It allows us to be with things just as they are, unfiltered and untainted by the conceptual mind. A state commonly known by many as ‘enlightenment.’

JCMac

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