Darrell Moneyhon

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About Me

The "agency" aspect of me: I am a retired psychology service provider, Psychology Assistant 2 (with a Master's Degree in Clinical Psychology), who worked 29 years in state institutions in Ohio. About half of my clinical career was conducted in a state psychiatric hospital. The other half was in state prisons. With the current economic problems, the state of Ohio offered a one year buy-out, so I had a chance to retire early (at age 53) and pursue my love of writing. I am a philosopher/poet.

My friends tell me that poetry is my strength. My looping and multi-layered right brain logic is sometimes difficult to translate into conceptual prose, but seems to translate easily into poetry. I have two and a half books of poetry compiled, but have not attempted to publish anything yet. I have two-thirds of a conceptual book written, and am working on it currently.

The book is called The Marketing of Virtue. It proposes cultural transformation via model interfaith communities devoted to growing optimal human beings (like living in a therapy group!). These communities would be put on the market like fast food chains, etc. The difference is that human virtue, rather than profit or material acquisition, is the "end in mind" (S. Covey). In the virtual community within the book, 5 healthy-community characteristics (each corresponding to a "spiritual principle") are also conceptualized as being"core virtues" that both individual citizens and the collective can focus on as we pursue personal/spiritual growth.

The communion aspect of me: I am blessed to be married for 33 years, and blessed with an awareness that my wife and two sons are gifts from beyond (from God) to assist me through this journey in the physical dimension. I pray mainly prayers of thankfulness and secondarily for guidance, and use quite a bit of meditation, including frequent slow deep breathing (using a technique learned from Andrew Weil's book Spontaneous Healing), occasional Vipassana (sp?) focus on breaths, frequent energy sweeping of aura, occassional power-naps in which I wait for instructive images ("power images"), frequent reading of "signs" (looking for synchronicity, points of meaning, coincidental or not), a moderate degree of dream interpretation (of regular, night-time dreams) and some lucid dreaming attempts. I am a Christian who attends a United Methodist church, but who is more interested with spirituality than the "vehicle" of organized religion.

Some of my most moving spiritual or mystical experiences include:

1. an upper room type dream (incorporating a baptismal scene, then ascent to upper room, with a healing image) that culminated with a male voice giving me a specific bible verse to go look up (Mathew 3:17, an affirmation of Christ by God, in the context of the descending dove and heaven-glow). The main character in the dream had been Christ-like.

2. a neat out-west trip in which I watched for "experience patterns" (my softer version of spirits). In one of 6 or 7 clusters of experiences, I was drawn to a story of a little boy who drowned while chasing geese/ducks near a local rapid. The connection to the story was a statue of little boy blue, in memory of the drowned boy. I allowed myself to thoroughly connect with the feel and energy and meaning of the story. A very weird thing, coincidental or not, happened as I left the park.

Although it was a still, sunny, day, a large cottonwood tree fell down as I was going through the gate exiting the park. The co-incidence of my feeling and the external event was mysterious to me (and still is). Stranger still, this "Spirit of Falling Tree" encounter seemed to foretell the death of my close neighbor, Bill, who a short time later drowned while playing in the Atlantic ocean during a family vacation. I was the first person on the scene when his mother heard the traumatic news and was convulsing as though having a seizure (that's what I thought it was at the time). All I could do is put my arms around her and hold her.

I do not rule out what Philip Groth called a "psychoid" event (telekinetic events). Once, as an older teenager or young adult I blurted out "die wasp" to a wasp which was irritating me, and the wasp instantly fell down dead. Another time, leaves fell instantly off of a plant as I entered a treatment team room. Even the group of professionals seated there, attributed the event to me.

All of these weird events could have been chance (I have been around for awhile - long enough to witness statistically rare events!), yet the possibility of them being "energy" or "spiritual" events continues to intrigue me to this day. Having said that, mysticism is clearly secondary to the good old everyday spirituality of loving and being receptive to the gift (s) of life, etc.

3. numerous premonitory dreams, some of which were of such levels of specificity/accuracy that they continue to challenge my rational mind.

4. a "vision" of a seed cutting across seasons. The vision occurred right after a meditation session I practiced at a roadside park on my way to work. The vision happened while I was driving. It was so intense that I realized I was not even seeing the road in front of me.

5. several elements of mild, baby-step, astral projection experiences of seeing things as though from an out of body perspective. Once I actually intensely felt self or another entity re-enter the right side of my body after it looked at me through the car window while I was power napping at the roadside park where I frequently meditated (including "tree-hugging"!).

6. many night-time dreams that seemed to have spiritually instructive value, to the point that I began referring to them as "night school".

7. seeing colors in my mind's eye, which seem to indicate frequencies of consciousness. Once I experienced it in relation to an infant during a church service. My mental state was an off-color which interfered with the infant's indigo blue, resulting in the child crying (or so I attributed it to my mental energy state). The child's mother took him or her away for awhile to calm down. While the child was gone, I meditated to purify my energy (return to my normal indigo/blue). When the infant returned with his/her mother to the congregation, the indigo/blue filled the entire room.

8. one clairvoyant experience while awake, during which I became practically obsessed out of the blue with singing an old Moody Blues tune about Timothy Leary (I recently downloaded the album that song is on from I tunes: album is In Search of the Lost Chord, song is Legend of a Mind). I was singing out loud "Timothy Leary's dead. No, no, no, no, he's outside, looking in." I had not thought of or sung that song for years. It came to me on the drive to work. When I got to work, I sang the chorus to a co-worker, and began to take them hostage with a philosophical treatise about the concept, etc.

Much later in the same day, on the drive home, I heard on the radio that Timothy Leary had died that morning. This was the first time I heard it. It is possible that I subconsciously heard an earlier radio announcement on the drive to work. I have never investigated the time of the first news release about his death. But I am inclined to think it was not from subliminal hearing, and that, in fact, I had a spiritual connection (as I have long felt) with a fellow "mind-journeyman" (Leary was in the psychology field also), who may have passed the torch onto me that morning. Not that I feel that I am called to turn folks onto LSD (I have never tried it myself), but to find non-chemical ways to help others explore hidden dimensions of the mind - altered states of consciousness, and advanced "aptitudes of consciousness".

I do buy into Leary's friend, Audious Huxley ('s), idea of a reducing valve which can be opened up with acid or other mind exercises. Huxley says some people have a naturally open valve, or thin veil, to other dimensions of consciousness, and that others can develop it with practice. I have seen some evidence of this "openness" or "thinness" applying to me, including feedback from friends and family who joke that I am like a spirit trapped in a body (family members once bought me a novelty post card to that effect), or that I (to use my sons' phrase) am a "natural pot head". I would guess that I am somewhere in between those who naturally have an open valve, or thin veil, and those who must work extensively to develop it. Mystical experiences come somewhat naturally to me, but only in fits and starts, and, more often than not, in vague or incomplete forms.

Education

(see above, "agency" section)

Career

(see above, "agency" section)

Hobbies and Interests

Distance running, poetry writing and reading, prose writing, philosophical speculation/writing, songwriting, golfing, spiritual growth practices and ideas.