Why I do what I do

Be forewarned, this blog is more for me than it is for anyone else. If you read it and become bored to tears it is NOT because I didn’t warn you.



I ponder how my life came to this point, the pagan path, the woodworking, the life I lead; and I attempt to rationalize why it is I do what I do. The epiphany to that question is because I love it. I love the freedom that my life entails. I love the creative process my life encompasses.



So, mostly for my own benefit, I write down some of the major moments or directions in my early life as a guide for what a wild and crazy ride my life has been so far:



From 1964 to 1976 I grew up in a small farming community in the state of Kansas. This is where wheat was everything and Bob Dole the senator would be king. For eight of those years I was raised by my grandparents, my grandfather was blind from working in the foundries, but he never let it stop him. He continued to raise chickens and goats, and he kept the pens cleaner than most industrial operations today.



In 1972 I got my first real insight into the current state of Christianity from a hell, fire, and brimstone Baptist Revival at the High School football field. I went because it was for the free bible (boggle).



In 1976 my mother met a Post Traumatic Disordered Vietnam Marine Corp Veteran, they married, which I often think she did it so I could have a father figure. While I am sure he loved my mother very much, I am not so sure he gave to much concern for me, but that is my own feelings. That year we moved to Arizona, it was amazing to actually see mountains for the first time. After 12 years the sea of wheat fields have become quite old. In Arizona I learned to hunt, fish, and spend hours and hours in the great outdoors of the desert. Most of those times I spent with Rocky O’Donnell, who recently passed away from a brain tumor. Those were good times all in all.



In 1977 my family joined the Assembly of God Church, and boy what a ride that was. That church was completely full of tongue talking, spirit dancing, and demon believing bible thumpers. People often confused their fears into a state of reality. Demons were around every corner, Satan was going to make life miserable for the church attendees (but please keep tithing), and the end of time would be any day now. Ya I know, and it gets worse.



In 1981, it was decided by this group of fanatics that their children must be controlled. They must decide where they go, who they are friends with, and a “Marine Corps” set of rules. Personally I couldn’t take it anymore, I was the banner child to my grandparent on what a good kid was, but then I rebelled from this heavy oppression. As a result I got into some trouble with the legal system and was sent to the Teen Challenge program (a program operated by Assembly of God churches for trouble men and women, but really just a guise to complete indoctrination to the point of no questioning), where the brain washing could be completed. This is where as a 16 year old, I was sent to Los Angeles, where I could live with 15 to 20 other men, and be told that any arousal I received from being any where near a female was a sin. While attending, the Assembly of God big boys decided to close the center I was at, this of course after one of the participants ran away with the wife of the program administer in Riverside California. But low and behold God being the great superior being that he was, provided a place for me at a new program called the New Challenge Ministries. New Challenge was a place where they held true to the indoctrination practices of the Assembly of God Church. After a year of attending these programs I was allowed to return home.



After trying to figure out where my life was going, I decided to attend college. Not just any college, but a good outstanding Christian college, where I would not be tempted by the wiles of the secular world. That was until I met my first wife, and I was thoroughly tempted by her wiles. After a year of attending Evangel College I decided I would transfer to the secular state university, so I could be even more tempted by her wiles.



Eventually she blessed me with two beautiful boys after being tempted by lots and lots of those wiles. After a short time serving in the U.S. Army, I went back and finished my degree at Southwest Missouri State University (now called Missouri State University) with a bachelors degree in secondary education in history, psychology, religion (rut roh), geography, and political science (double rut roh).



After a year of trying to find a teaching job in an era of education cutbacks of Reagan and Daddy Bush (read my lips no new taxes hehe) I decided teaching was not for me. I divorce later, more my fault than hers, met my second wife, rebound relationships are bad bad bad, though she was an awesome woman, my guilt would not allow me to be happy. And eventually met Gyspy who has be a wonderful, awesome, super, beautiful, and a multitude of other positive pronouns, soul mate.



But why am I a student of the occult? Is it another form of rebellion against the Christianity of Today? Or is it seeking a new direction in order to understand truth about human spirituality? Those are questions I have considered for a very long time.



I can remember at 8 and 9 years old playing with Ouija Boards with my mother. I remember reading her astrology books. I remember her fascination with the hidden knowledge of our ancestors (or what is commonly known as the occult). And those times instilled in me a curious nature about those things. I secretly studied, as a young teenager, sources of mythology, the histories of the ancients, the stories of the gods and goddesses of different cultures. And during the periods of my indoctrination (brainwashing) I studied the occult so that I could understand the Christian adversary Satan. In order to defeat an enemy one must know that enemy kind of thinking.



While attending that bad, bad secular college, I took a course on World Religions (rut roh). And for the very reason that many fanatical Christian cults enforce self imposed ignorance (ours is not to question why, but just to accept) I feel into the Christian concept of a trap. I learned truth, that all major religions had a theme, a basis, and a connection to each other. All of them no matter how misguided, or misconceived had some truth. Ours is to find that truth in order to ascend to the next step of actualization.



While I may be a little (lol) biased towards Christianity I like who I have become. And even in my indoctrination to fear of things unknown, I have never met a Satan or Devil. I have met truth in ways that are indescribable and I like that part of me. I have freed my spiritual self from the bonds of religious systems that bind one in the guise of discipline and fear.



So in summary I do what I do as a method of self-realization, self-discovery, and because I am free to be me.




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