Ongoing Journeys, Leaving Behind an Abused Life

 I'm very pleased to be a member of this online community. In a way, this is sort of a virtual sangha. I was asked to keep the community informed of my ongoing journeys in my movement toward realization. Here's a breakdown so far:

First, I'd like to say that I think my search for greater truth and big pictures began in youth due to finding out about my father's suicide when I was 13. He had died about a week after my mother became pregnant with me in 1976. My whole family had told me his death was due to an accidental overdose of medication given to him directly by a doctor for a football injury from high school. But when I was finally told the truth, things changed rapidly. I was in the midst of puberty, voice changing, starting to like girls even more than I already had. And now I find out that my own dad, who was my own personal male figure, had seen life as something terrible enough to kill himself over. This was intense. I had to know what life really was. I had to know if I would someday find out whatever it was that my dad had found that made suicide his only option. 

My mother committed suicide almost 3 years ago. I think it was this that made the all out search for enlightenment an inevitability for me. She was only 18 when she found my father's body in their apartment in Syracuse, New York. I know that this was exceedingly traumatic for her. But she never spoke about it. In fact, she instead continued down the path of drug dealer and user. She had been smuggling heroin across the Mexican border with my uncle, Clem, since she was 15 year's old, hiring prostitutes in Mexico to hide heroin in their vaginas and cross the border where the exchanges were then made. She married a violent drug dealer and user of Meth when I was 4 or 5. The two of them beat me almost on a daily basis. I had various bones broken, a collar bone popped out of place, and, when I was finally abandoned by my mother at the age of 13, the child protective services informed my aunt Monica (my new caretaker) that they had been called over 50 times by our neighbors who heard my screams constantly. Yet they never came to save me. They did ask me questions during several interviews. But I always said that it wasn't true. I always protected my mother because..... actually, I can't tell you why. I don't really know why. 

Years later, when I was about 25, my mother had joined the 12 step program, and one of the steps is to make amends with the people you've hurt. She told me she had something to say. "I want you to know that the reason I hated you your whole life was because I resented you and I resented being stuck with you when I was a teenager." It wasn't the most compassionate thing she could have said to me. It actually made me very sad. But it also made me aware of what the reasoning was behind all of the abuse I had experienced. The truth is, she was raised Catholic and the nuns scared the shit out of her so much that she ended up not aborting me out of the fear of burning for an eternity in hell. Who knew that the very same Catholic dogmatism that was responsible for nearly a hundred million murders in the last few hundred years could actually be responsible for saving a life such as mine. Talk about weird. 

Thankfully, my grandfather Bob (my grandmother met him around the same time I was born and they never married but are still together as partners) had studied philosophy at university. When I was 8 years-old he sent me a copy of the Tao Te Ching. I can't really describe to you what it was like for me to read this book in the midst of all of this chaos. But, for the first time in my life, I became aware of the interplay of opposites. And this awareness told me that as bad as life was for me at this time, it only meant that life would be balanced with beauty and grace as its necessary, interdependent opposite. And I can say, this has been the case in this life since then. 

When I was in my mid-teens, Bob turned me on to Alan Watts by sending me The Way of Zen. Now it was on! Alan prepared me for Louise J. Halle, Emerson, and Will Durant, who prepared me for Ram Dass, who prepared me for Ken Wilber. And I consider every one of these men, including my grandfather, Bob, to be collectively my father, my real father in this life. Without these great people and their benevolent gifts to the world, I have a feeling I would have been so lost that I would have committed suicide as well, just like my parents. 

It was Ken Wilber who spoke adamantly and often in his audio talks about the importance of finding a teacher to help with transcending the ego. And it was also he that spoke often of the many benefits of meditation, and that five years of it could help one move up two levels on the conscious development scale. And this is why my full-time practice began. 

So, that's the skinny on this weird little life. I'm very grateful to all of the above teachers. I'll be 34 this year, and all I want to do is have the great Realization and write books someday that other kids without hope or surrounding wisdom can come across in their own times of darkness. 

And I think I should also say that this kid who came out of one of the worst ghettos in Vallejo, California, who had been beaten and told he was nothing for the first 13 years of his life, who had become an orphan because of both parents committing suicide, this me that is writing this blog write here on IntegralLife.com, has now done the following:

Travelled the world, taught English in Turkey, lived in four countries, was a paid theater actor for over a decade, a stand-up comic, a film director and writer, and just completed my first album which is a compilation of folk music and hip hop. And I owe it all to my teachers, including my parents, for though they were never there for me, they made room for better parental figures such as my grandfather, Bob, and all of my favorite writers to step in and take their place. And the amount of depth and love within me is so great because of all of this. I'm still working on the healing. But it is all for the betterment of the world. I cannot wait to see what good works I end up doing in the world. Someday, I will be a great help to this planet in ways I can't even dream right now. 

With infinite love, peace, and joy,

Billy Guilfoyle