Blank Canvas

[Sebastion]

I was backing my car out of my driveway on the way to work. My wife had just kissed me goodbye and was standing on the front porch. I saw a man on the sidewalk who looked like he was an accident looking for a place to happen. The dude was serious trouble. To me, he might as well have been carrying a big sign telling the whole world as much. He waited until I turned the corner, crossed the road to my house and knocked on the front door.

Fortunately, my wife was smart enough to have locked the door and the door itself was a windowed security door of sorts. He wanted to come inside and use the phone. My wife told him that there was a payphone across the street and closed the inner door. He then left. The next morning, I told my 8 year old son that if anyone comes knocking on the door, especially the one who came the night before, not to let him in under any excuse. The wife decided to go grocery shopping and took my car, leaving my son home and me still sleeping from the previous night shift. Sure enough this dude came knocking once again. Again, fortunately my son said no and had already locked the outer door. I knew then that this dude was dead serious about real trouble.

My son came upstairs and woke me up immediately. I called the police and informed them about this dude but I knew I was wasting my time and theirs. I decided I wasn't taking any chances with the lives of my wife and child. I purchased a smith&wesson .44 magnum and a box of shells. While loading it that evening, I had every intention of doing whatever was necessary with it. Being military trained, I certainly knew how to use it.

The gods must have been smiling upon us and he never made it back to my house. He was picked up two days later for three attempted rapes in the same day, about 4 blocks away.

[Arrowwind]

When I was about 17 my girl friend and I got into a car with two strange men ... a really stupid thing to do. One pulled a knife on us... it was up to my throat. My friend started crying, sobbing... and I started belly laughing.... which caused the two men to get into an arguement.. I laughed harder. tears were rolling down my face from laughter. Finally the guy with the knife said that this was too weird and they stopped the car and let us out. When we got out of the car I sat on the ground and laughed some more as they drove away...

all in all it was a good day. Nothing like a good belly laugh.

[Mike]

ahhhh....there he is

crisis averted.

[TargeT]

What's being described here kind of triggers some thoughts I've had about war.

I think people are inherently good, when they are cognizant of their situations and have the ability to make decisions emotion free (to include panic, fear, adoration, love etc.. all the strong ones).

how do we get people to go to different countries and "kill" other people?

well, in my mind; we don't, not really anyway.

its a multi step process, first spiking motivation/loyalty through various methods, be it patriotism, or poverty; the "subject" has to "want" to be there, at least more than she/he "doesn’t want" to be there.

Next we put them into a situation where it is either emotionally triggered that what they do next is good (ie: take out these "bad guys" and our "good guys" will be safe, a preventative measure but still backed by an emotional trigger) or it is situationally triggered that what they do next is self defense and necessary (ie: sending patrols out into area's that are known to have "bad guys" there; "bad guys" that will probably react defensively themselves trying to repel the "good guys" that they see as invaders)

In essence violence happens between humans because of a lack of communication & understanding. We have these "killer instincts" to deal with non-human entities, but they can be leveraged against us.

it seems like the stories shared here tend to confirm this idea and leads to my question: can humans truly be "evil", or just REALLY mislead / confused?

This thought has changed me to a different mentality when facing violence, I will try almost anything to de-escilate a sutation and "talk" more.

[Kiforall]

A couple of years ago my family and I moved onto a estate that was very family friendly, all the kids played out together and it felt very safe. The only bad cookie was a young lady who was addicted to heroin. She had her two children taken off her after she was found slumped in a telephone box completely off her chonk and her poor children were still in the house, home alone.
She frequented the local rehab center and had met a complete weirdo who had just been released from prison. The housing association had been trying to evict her for over 2yrs without luck. This weirdo ended up living in the house and it soon became apparent he was a pedophile !
He would watch the children playing on the trampoline in the garden opposite and walk past the window naked, he was sitting on the bench at the local playground trying to talk to children and everyone was very wary of him.
Not long after his appearance on the estate everyone received a letter from the housing officer requesting us to attend a meeting at a neighbor's house. A policeman was in the kitchen and proceeded to inform us that this man was a threat to our children but until he re-offended there was nothing the police could do, he had no restrictions to his movements and could loiter around the school or playground as long as he didn't re offend. We were advised to keep our children inside and only let them play out with close adult supervision. At the time my son was 7yrs and my daughter 9yrs, they had just finished school for the summer term and they had 6 weeks imprisonment to look forward to.
That same evening a few of us got together for a barbeque and quite a lot of alcohol was consumed, I listened to the 'hard men' discussing how they were going to graffiti the door etc and knocked a few more vodka's back. I then slipped away down to the house and tried the door, it was open, the lights didn't work but I managed to have a quick look around the house by the light from the street lights. There was no furniture inside, it looked like they were sleeping on quilts on the floor and the house stank of excrement. I picked up one of the quilts and went into the kitchen, where I stuffed the quilt into the grill of the oven and proceeded to turn the electric oven on. I left the house and returned to the party. Unbeknown to me the electric must have been disconnected!
When I returned to the party I was asked where I'd been, I replied that I had been to sort something out and the details came out. The men went mad and ran to the house in a panic, the police had been called out and I went back home awaiting what I thought would be a definite trip down to the station.
The policeman that came was the same man who had given us the advice to 'lock up our children' earlier that evening and surprisingly he only gave me a very empathic slap on the wrist. The police had to board up the house at that point, probably for the safety of the weirdo in case he came back. The house was never returned to the heroin addict and eventually a new family moved in. I have no regrets for what I did but I may have felt differently if the electricity bill had been paid!
No body puts my children at risk

[mosquito]

In 1988 I found myself a new, beter paid job, and it looked as though our financial troubles were over and that the future was going to be rosy. Then my wife got arrested for stealing a lare number of cheques from her employer. My world fell apart, I was an honest man (too honest if truth be told), and to have the person closest to me behave like this, and publicly humiliate me to boot was too much. But ... I stuck by her, visited her in prison every fortnight for 6 months, kept our home nice, wrote to her every day and basically poured all my love into her. There was no-one I could talk to and I suffered her imprisonment in silence.

Anyway, in May 1989 she was released from prison, and I was the happiest man alive. In July, the agency I was contracting through had a big bash at a country hotel, and we went along for a good night's celebration. I was happy to have my wife back with me, and happy we could be together and have fun. During the eveining, I also danced with maybe 2 or 3 other women, quite inocuously, but when my wife and I got to our hotel room, she went ballistic (and believe me, she was one argumentative, obnoxious woman) she was screaming at me and accusing me of everything under the sun, and then she slapped my face. Something snapped and I had her on the bed, with my hands round her throat, strangling her, and I meant it. Then I saw the look in her eyes and stopped.

[Kiforall]

I can't resist.....(using the best GLP subject) I must confess I've murdered the tomato plants.

[NancyV]

Great stories! I always love to hear other people's experiences of how they react in challenging situations. I have never been one to judge other's experiences because we don't know what they are here to experience and learn. It may be horrible, it may be exciting and fun, but it is perfect for them. We learn so much about ourselves in the most intense experiences.

Speaking of the "dark night of the soul" I don't know anyone who has gone through more dark nights than my husband. His early life was filled with much death and violence starting in Vietnam and continuing on after returning when he became a counter terrorist for the US government.

The following story happened when he was still 17, although I think he left childhood behind when he was about 12. He had been in Vietnam for maybe 6-8 months at this time. His team of special ops assassins were living with a tribe of Hmung warriors. To be accepted as a warrior in the tribe men had to have a wife so the 10 members of his team were all given wives. At the time of this story his wife was pregnant. Her name was Lea.

This is an excerpt from his manuscript: Blackheart the Last True Believer

Two weeks later we took thirty Hmung out on an ambush. It was a waste of time. We saw no enemy the whole time out, but returned to the village the next day and walked into hell. While we were gone the village had been attacked. All but four of the people in the village were dead... the chief, who was crucified, a young woman who had hidden in the jungle, a child who had been hidden in an outhouse, and Lea.

Lea had been crucified, skinned, and badly burned. They had gang-raped her. They had beaten her with clubs in the belly and pulled our child from her, killing it. They had cut the tendons behind her ankles, knees and in her elbows. Her fingers, toes, ears and breasts had been cut off. Her teeth had been hammered out and almost every bone in her body broken, yet she still lived. I cut her down. Every movement brought pain to her destroyed body. I carried her to our hut. A woman who had been beautiful the day before was now barely recognizable as human. I had grown to love this woman in the past months. I hadn’t realized just how much she had come to mean to me.

I sat there holding her as she and I cried together. Her pain was so plain to see, the pleading in her eyes hurt so much. As I rocked her in my arms I pulled out my .45, I kissed her, pulled her to my chest and put a bullet through her head. My final act of love that would haunt me forever. No man should ever love so much that he will kill that which he loves in order to stop their pain. I lay her out on our sleeping mat next to our child who would now never be born, and covered their bodies. As I left our hut for the last time I set it afire. I stumbled to the center of the village, Lea’s blood covering me. I threw back my head, flung wide my blood-covered arms and howled my hate and rage at the gods. As I screamed, the other men would not approach me. I fully embraced the insanity that closed over my mind. From that moment on I lived for only one thing. To kill.

I turned to three Hmung warriors standing watching me and in a voice that I had never heard before said, “I want prisoners. Bring me men who can tell me who did this.” They started to gather up equipment and get some other warriors to help them. “I want at least three living NVA who were here!” The voice coming from my mouth was cold and deep, like a wind blowing from the deepest open grave in the world. “I want them here now!” That strange voice echoed loudly through the jungle as the Hmung warriors ran into the jungle to follow my orders. The chief smiled at me, lay back, and died. He had joined his daughter and grandchild, my Lea and our baby. He knew he could go to his rest and that they would be avenged.

The rest of my team looked at me strangely, as if something larger, darker, and far more dangerous had taken my place in that hut. I was never to be the “Kid” again to any of them. I was not just someone else; I was something else in their eyes. They were right, an angel of death had been born.

From that day on I was known as Blackheart.

[another bob]

Chilling, Nancy!

Echoes of Apocalypse Now, but haunting, in that it was your husband and soul mate!

Do you think the slaughter experience opened him to taking in an "attachment"?

Thanks to both of you for reminding me why I skipped that scene!

Blessings!

[Kiforall]

Posted by NancyV (here)
Great stories! I always love to hear other people's experiences of how they react in challenging situations. I have never been one to judge other's experiences because we don't know what they are here to experience and learn. It may be horrible, it may be exciting and fun, but it is perfect for them. We learn so much about ourselves in the most intense experiences.

Speaking of the "dark night of the soul" I don't know anyone who has gone through more dark nights than my husband. His early life was filled with much death and violence starting in Vietnam and continuing on after returning when he became a counter terrorist for the US government.

The following story happened when he was still 17, although I think he left childhood behind when he was about 12. He had been in Vietnam for maybe 6-8 months at this time. His team of special ops assassins were living with a tribe of Hmung warriors. To be accepted as a warrior in the tribe men had to have a wife so the 10 members of his team were all given wives. At the time of this story his wife was pregnant. Her name was Lea.

This is an excerpt from his manuscript: Blackheart the Last True Believer

Two weeks later we took thirty Hmung out on an ambush. It was a waste of time. We saw no enemy the whole time out, but returned to the village the next day and walked into hell. While we were gone the village had been attacked. All but four of the people in the village were dead... the chief, who was crucified, a young woman who had hidden in the jungle, a child who had been hidden in an outhouse, and Lea.

Lea had been crucified, skinned, and badly burned. They had gang-raped her. They had beaten her with clubs in the belly and pulled our child from her, killing it. They had cut the tendons behind her ankles, knees and in her elbows. Her fingers, toes, ears and breasts had been cut off. Her teeth had been hammered out and almost every bone in her body broken, yet she still lived. I cut her down. Every movement brought pain to her destroyed body. I carried her to our hut. A woman who had been beautiful the day before was now barely recognizable as human. I had grown to love this woman in the past months. I hadn’t realized just how much she had come to mean to me.

I sat there holding her as she and I cried together. Her pain was so plain to see, the pleading in her eyes hurt so much. As I rocked her in my arms I pulled out my .45, I kissed her, pulled her to my chest and put a bullet through her head. My final act of love that would haunt me forever. No man should ever love so much that he will kill that which he loves in order to stop their pain. I lay her out on our sleeping mat next to our child who would now never be born, and covered their bodies. As I left our hut for the last time I set it afire. I stumbled to the center of the village, Lea’s blood covering me. I threw back my head, flung wide my blood-covered arms and howled my hate and rage at the gods. As I screamed, the other men would not approach me. I fully embraced the insanity that closed over my mind. From that moment on I lived for only one thing. To kill.

I turned to three Hmung warriors standing watching me and in a voice that I had never heard before said, “I want prisoners. Bring me men who can tell me who did this.” They started to gather up equipment and get some other warriors to help them. “I want at least three living NVA who were here!” The voice coming from my mouth was cold and deep, like a wind blowing from the deepest open grave in the world. “I want them here now!” That strange voice echoed loudly through the jungle as the Hmung warriors ran into the jungle to follow my orders. The chief smiled at me, lay back, and died. He had joined his daughter and grandchild, my Lea and our baby. He knew he could go to his rest and that they would be avenged.

The rest of my team looked at me strangely, as if something larger, darker, and far more dangerous had taken my place in that hut. I was never to be the “Kid” again to any of them. I was not just someone else; I was something else in their eyes. They were right, an angel of death had been born.

From that day on I was known as Blackheart.

Crying now, what a unselfish act

[NancyV]

Posted by another bob (here)
Chilling, Nancy!

Echoes of Apocalypse Now, but haunting, in that it was your husband and soul mate!

Do you think the slaughter experience opened him to taking in an "attachment"?

Thanks to both of you for reminding me why I skipped that scene!

Blessings!

I think he probably already had the attachment but at that point he let it have almost full control for a while. When he was around 10, if I remember correctly, he was electrocuted. His father had to knock him free from the live wire that he was stuck to. It was at that time that he changed and he thinks that's when he acquired his "companion". His mother said he went from a really nice, sweet boy to being very tough, solitary and almost obsessed with becoming a warrior of some kind. He left home on his 16th birthday with a fake ID to join the military and go to Vietnam.

[ViralSpiral]

Great sharing, thank you

I have been known for acts of tunnel-vision-anger, such as:

Driving into a taxi for deliberately cutting in front of me. We were going snails pace, so no real damage. It could have turned ugly as the gentleman jumped out of the car towards me and as one knows, South Africa is not always the rainbow nation... he could have had a gun. He didn't and I am here to tell you I will never do that one again.

Or, sticking a bumper sticker onto a cars windscreen of a lady who stole my parking space. Fortunately for her, there were no severe profanities to be found in the family store, and the worst I could find was: beware of the dog
Which, in this case, was me

They have let me out of my play-pen now. The tunnel is 'lit', and random acts of blankness occur rarely

[mosquito]

Jesus, I've just reread my post and it's affected me quite deeply. I still have so much energy locked into that time, I thought I'd dealt with it all, obvioulsy not......

On a lighter note, but still within topic :

I've never been a violent type, it's always sickened me. I've only ever punched someone twice, both times at school and both out of sheer terror. I always used to have a very very long fuse, with a powder keg at the end. I basically don't like being f*cked around (who does ?), I get on with my life, don't mess with anyone else and don't want anyone messing with me. When I was a child, I was content to play on my own for hours on end. The following 2 stories are from my childhood; the first of these I don't remember, but my mother always had great fun in telling me .......

I was riding my tricycle up and down the pavement, quite happily minding my own business. Then the neighbour's boy, 3 years older than me, started to intrerfere, blocking my path and generally being irritating. According to my mother, I put up with this for a while, trying to ignore him, but then I just stopped, got off the trike, went to the boot (this was in the 60s) took out my cricket bat and whacked him over the back. I then put the bat back in the boot, and continued my game.

The next episode I DO remember ! I was maybe 7 or 8, and we used to occasionally visit the seaside at the weekends. This particular day, I was quietly building a sandcastle on my own, but there was some other obnoxious kid kept trying to meddle with my designs and, once again, I put up with it for a while, then enough was enough and I hit him very hard over the head with my spade. Not a plastic spade, metal with a wooden handle. My brother tells me that there was quite a lot of trouble after that, but I don't remember !!!!

[Jenci]

Great thread and OP, Fred, thanks.

About 8 years ago I was with my son's father. He was abusive (not physically) but he completely destroyed any sense of self worth that I had and yet I craved and lived for the smallest of compliments which came my way.

The relationship was sick and codependent, both of us behaving in circular patterns of unhealthy behaviour just to cope with our lives. Anyway that is a whole story in itself but we had got to the point where just as it couldn't get any worse, I found out about 3 other women, he had a breakdown, was hospitalised, I supported him and forgave him.

He came home, the abuse continued but of course now it was not his fault it was his 'mental health' issues and his psychiatrist had flattered me with his gratitude that I was being so supportive to his patient and this flattery was like nectar to me, I clung to it and carried on with the job of being supportive.

Two of the relationships carried on, I found out, he gave the threats of suicide, I forgave, he abused and so on.

Up to this point in my life I had never felt any aggression. If there was conflict I would be reduced to a crying wreck begging for it to stop. I never remember really shouting at anyone or losing my temper. In fact I had always felt proud of the fact that I wasn't one of those people who lose their temper.

Surprisingly (well it was to me anyway at the time as I genuinely believed he could never do such a thing) I found out he was still cheating with these other two women.

It happened so quick. I literally flew at him so quickly my feet felt like they left the floor. In a split second I was right up at him one hand round his throat, in a Darth Vader choke hold. I wanted to squeeze all life out of him completely in that moment. I hated him that much. I had never seen that fear in his eyes before and I knew without a doubt, that I could actually do that.

That frightened me too and I looked down and saw my young son watching me and I let go. Just as quick, I switched back and I apologised and asked for forgiveness........and so the relationship continued in the same way for a while before I could break free.


Took me much longer to get to the root cause of the codependancy which had always led me into needy, clingy relationships.





And Anakin was such a cute kid too

[Fred Steeves]

Posted by WhiteFeather (here)
Interesting Fred and thanks for sharing this with us. ButI have a question..... if i may. Did this experience change the way you may possibly face possible altercations/confrontations in the future. A learning curve perhaps. It did for me when i furiously punched my 21 year old daughter in the mouth and nearly knocking out her 2 front teeth after she taunted me for several hrs.. This is why i asked. Learning to control/cope with anger. And I think im learning it. Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth.

Hi WhiteFeather, good question my friend. Yes, it did change the way I view altercations/confrontations. I have what I could call a leash on that part of myself now, like a dog, now that I know it's there. It's a happy dog, much prefers to mind it's own business just sniffing around, and is great with kids, But it's also got a purpose, it's a watch dog. On extremely rare occasion, it sees something that surpasses some invisible line on the acceptability scale, and it demands some extra leash. It won't attack anyone unless attacked, but when it bares it's teeth the message is crystal clear, "back off". It seems to work very well.

What happened with your daughter, are you two good? How would you handle that same situation today?

[Chester]

OK - to read this, make me two promises. One, that you fully understand and accept that what I am about to put forth is nothing more than speculation based on a vast amount of circumstantial evidence only. Second, promise is that if you consider the possibility that there could be truth to what I am writing about here, accept that I have long moved past any judgement of my Father nor anyone he may have been involved with, some who are still alive to this day. I am at peace with what I am about to present.

In 1979, my Father was found dead in his office/apartment. He had supposedly gone on a trip to Louisiana to obtain some money (approximately $80K or so) that he owed to several bookies. Just three months before his wife of 13 years had died of pancreatic cancer. My Father and step mother had just had a child and this was considered to be a miracle as she was told when she was perhaps 22 years old she would never be able to have children (part of her motivation to marry my father as he had two, my sister (three years younger than me) and myself).

This is when all the pistols were discovered. At least 6 or 8 pistols of varying types that he had hidden in all sorts of places. What was interesting is that the "family lawyer" (a lawyer who did wills and trusts) provided many of these pistols to some authorities and what came back was that each pistol had been used once. Meaning that several rounds had been fired, but only once.

Without going into the several dozen circumstantial factors that I recalled over the past several years and the many that came to light since his "death" which was concluded to have been suicide (and likely was suicide though their is the possibility of "suicided"), I was able to conclude that there is a very real possibility my father was a professional assassin and worked for elements of the "cabal" that existed in Texas and Louisiana back in the 60s and 70s.

Some of the highlights of the evidence is as follows:

Once when I was 9 or so years old, while he was driving just me and him somewhere, he turned to me and said, "I once did a favor for Carlos Marcello" then he turned his attention back to his driving and never said another word. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Marcello

Once when I was about 15 years old, he said to me one day, "Let's go see a movie." We never went to see movies so this was highly unusual. The movie he took me to was called - "The Mechanic" -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mec...281972_film%29

I recall him sitting to my right and intently watching the movie. He never spoke to me about the movie after we watched it.

I recall one of my cousins who my mother recently confirmed to me he is also my "godfather" giving me a single shot 22 caliber rifle when I was just about to turn 6 years old (my best recollection). Because "my cousin" is still alive, I want to be careful here as to what you, the reader might think I may be implying - so I want to state clearly again - I have ZERO actual evidence of anything other than circumstantial considerations.

My parents sent me to a camp (only once) just before I turned 9 or 10 (I am unsure which). At the camp I joined the rifle team. I was a a superior shooter to any of my peers though I had no clue how good I really was. On the last day of camp, the neighboring camp came to our camp for competition. One of the camp supervisors came to me and said, "Chester, you seem to be a pretty good shot and we would like you to compete against the big boys," and so I was taken to the competition with the older kids. I recalled getting a strange feeling while I was shooting that I was being watched. I recall looking behind me and seeing two or three guys I had never seen before that appeared to be watching me shoot.

About 4 years later, my Dad came to me one day and said, "Hey, your cousin (same cousin that gave me the 22 - though he was called "uncle") wants to know if you want to go pheasant hunting with him tomorrow." Odd because I had virtually zero contact with Uncle XYZ since he gave me that rifle and never been hunting nor fishing with him. I asked Dad if he was going and he said, "no" which I also thought was odd. What was also unusual was that it was to be a Friday and I had school, but apparently this was ok. So the next morning my cousin picked me up real early and he mentioned we were going to stop by and pick up some friends on the way to his ranch in East Texas.

We stopped off in East Dallas to pick up his friends who happened to be the Dallas County DA, Henry Wade (and two of his sons) -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wade

I remember that day wanting to impress these guys (though I had never ever shot a shotgun before in my life). I recall I never got a confirmed kill. One time a bird went down but when I looked to my left, there was one of Henry Wade's sons (older than I... perhaps 19 or so years old) and he looked at me like it was his bird. Another time I nicked one and it fell but started running off into the bushes and I recall chasing after it and even shot at it once but never found the bird. To this day I am uncertain if I ever actually shot a bird (this includes my attempts when younger with a BB gun).

Anyways, soon after I was sent to a Prep School (one that members of both sides of my family had attended) and discovered marijuana at age 15 and became a small time dealer within months. The weed would make me crazy and it is my assumption that at this point, anyone who may have had ideas about my future probably adjusted those ideas.

I have several dozen other interesting factors but its best I go to the heart of this post now.

My father was also involved with some small time mafioso types in Dallas. My Dad was a massive alcoholic who began every day with vodka and OJ on ice. After his first tall glass of that (which he would have completed by 6 AM or so, he switched to straight vodka on ice. Smirnoff 100 (the blue bottle), not the lamer 80 proof red bottle stuff. He also partook of a full menu of prescription drugs for all sorts of things. OK, so he would spend much of his days in bars on Greenville Avenue in Dallas though my step-mother hated it... she couldn't do a thing about it.

My father ended up "owning" a bar called the Shanty Lounge, just off Greenville Avenue on Lovers Lane. I came to find out later, the bar was financed by the Williams Brothers who were into vending machines and other businesses and were considered one of the local mafioso forces along with the Campisi family. My Dad was pretty sick at this point (it was around 1974 or so) and was used as a setup by the Williams brothers to attempt to overturn a Texas State law which barred vending machine companies from owning the establishments within which their machines reside. Somehow a case occurred that my father was able to escalate from the state court level (where the Williams brother's had clout) to the federal level where my dad seemed to think he had clout. The Williams brothers were a no show and my Dad won by default their attempt to take over ownership. A few weeks later my Dad woke up in his car beaten up pretty badly (but alive) and that was the end of that era of his life as he got out of the local bar business.

During that same time frame, I recall my step mother crying one day and I asked her what it was about. She unloaded it all to me. She had been receiving calls for months. The caller (a male) would tell her exactly where my sister was at that moment. What was unusual about that was that my sister was attending a boarding school in Arizona. The caller called back and told her exactly where I was too (the boarding school in Pennsylvania). The caller then one day (this was the day I found her crying), had called her and asked her this - "Do you want to wake up dead?" She knew all these calls were threats related to the activities of my father but my Dad would never tell her (nor anyone) about them and refused to talk to her at all about the threatening calls. This was around 1974 ish.

My father had reached the stage of his alcoholism where he was throwing up blood and passing blood in his stools. He was dying. Somehow we were able to get him in hospitals but he always went back to drinking. AA meetings started happening yet he would not stay sober. I was taken to Alateen and my step mother went to Alanon.

Suddenly in January 1975, my father stopped drinking. But he was clearly a totally messed up human being emotionally. He was also the most amazingly loving (powerful love) human being I ever knew, but that is what I had seen and experienced of him. Note, I was unable to put any of the possibilities together until well after his death.

OK, now for the next part which is purely speculation. I suspect my father may have been an assassin. I suspect he did some high level jobs for a "cabal" and that some may have been related to the Kennedy assassination and the subsequent "cleanup" requirements (witnesses that saw too much). Again, purely speculation. I suspect that when he sobered up, he also refused to take new jobs. It was only three years after he sobered up that his wife, at age 39, suddenly contracted pancreatic cancer and died by age 40. If my speculations might be true, I believe he may have been warned several times that unless he returns to "work" bad things may happen to his family.

The death of his beloved wife may have convinced him that his handlers were serious. I often speculated that if my Dad did indeed commit suicide, could part of his reason to do so be so that perhaps his handlers might not harm my sister or me? I will never know.

Now for the most important part of this post. The reason I am able to post this now is because I have no judgement about the matter (again - it is also and only speculation) BUT, if there is truth to my theory, I judge no one. I do not judge my dad, I understand. I do not judge the local handlers nor the players at higher levels at all whatsoever. Why? Because I firmly believe we all choose our experiences. If it came to pass one day that some old man approached me and sat beside me on an isolated park bench and then struck up a conversation and then said, "Son... I knew your Father."

And then proceeded to inform me he worked with my Dad and/or was my Dad's handler, I would ask him if I could give him a hug and beg him to share all the stories with me and inform him i would honor any code of silence asked of me "FULLY." I would also mention how I sadly failed at my own auditions but that clearly I am incapable of harming anyone that way and thus my failure was meant to be. In fact, and though I am 55 years old, I would be open to contract work as long as it fit within my own personal guidelines... guidelines within which what i do would have the chance to result in a more peaceful world for my children. But I would be lying if I did not state how badly I feel i missed my own, true calling and how I missed out on being involved in the world at this level of interplay.

It has always been my dream to write my autobiography (the narcissist is showing here). The title would be called "The Failure." The reason is that based on my speculations, I failed to follow in my Father's footsteps. I failed my audition to receive a part in the "real" game. It is my greatest regret.

There's my soul - all laid out, bare and naked. I care not if anyone judges me.

My favorite movies of all time are -
The Mechanic (obviously)
All three Godfather movies
Spy Game (Redford and Pitt)
The Matrix (all three though the first is my favorite)
Charlie Wilson's War (Hanks, Julia Roberts and the character, Guss (a zen Buddhist it seemed)
The Devil's Advocate (Pacino and Reeves)
The Truman Show (Carrey) - says "Day 10,909" on the cover... take out the zeros and you get 199 - my bday is 19-9 which I always thought one of those weird synchronicities...

Anyways - life is amazing. I maybe missed my calling OR maybe I just wasn't ready for the calling I have now - which is "no calling" just "being."

I am glad I can share my inner whackiness. Thanks, Fred for starting an awesome thread! Love to All Chester

[Fred Steeves]

Posted by justoneman (here)
It has always been my dream to write my autobiography (the narcissist is showing here). The title would be called "The Failure." The reason is that based on my speculations, I failed to follow in my Father's footsteps. I failed my audition to receive a part in the "real" game. It is my greatest regret.

Hi Chester. In a roundabout way, it would seem you and I have more in common than first meets the eye. I don't have any dreams of writing my autobiography, my life has never had any intrigue, and I especially dislike talking about myself. However, until just somewhat recently, I still shook my head in wonder at "successful" people, who say they always knew what they wanted to do in life, even as small children. You know, like astronauts, cops, firefighters, and now hitmen.(LOL)

I've never had the faintest clue what I was here to do, and therefore always kind of wondered in the back of my mind: "What WERE you born to be good at? Being an average nobody?"

Now it's becoming clear the old saying: "Lose every battle, yet win the war". There's something a whole hell of a lot more going on here than meets the eye, and one can either "see" it, or they can't. Social status, accomplishments, past deeds good or bad, everything, is completely irrelevent. All bets are off...Sudden death overtime as they say in sports...

I'll leave it there for now, except to say it's a real eye opener, to realize that there isn't even a war.

[Sebastion]

Ahh Fred, methinks you have hit the nail squarely on the head. After all my friend, you are a carpenter, lol! Yes it is definitely an eye opener when one realizes that the war is really within the self and when that is realized the battles and wars with others cease.

Posted by Fred Steeves (here)

Posted by justoneman (here)
It has always been my dream to write my autobiography (the narcissist is showing here). The title would be called "The Failure." The reason is that based on my speculations, I failed to follow in my Father's footsteps. I failed my audition to receive a part in the "real" game. It is my greatest regret.

Hi Chester. In a roundabout way, it would seem you and I have more in common than first meets the eye. I don't have any dreams of writing my autobiography, my life has never had any intrigue, and I especially dislike talking about myself. However, until just somewhat recently, I still shook my head in wonder at "successful" people, who say they always knew what they wanted to do in life, even as small children. You know, like astronauts, cops, firefighters, and now hitmen.(LOL)

I've never had the faintest clue what I was here to do, and therefore always kind of wondered in the back of my mind: "What WERE you born to be good at? Being an average nobody?"

Now it's becoming clear the old saying: "Lose every battle, yet win the war". There's something a whole hell of a lot more going on here than meets the eye, and one can either "see" it, or they can't. Social status, accomplishments, past deeds good or bad, everything, is completely irrelevent. All bets are off...Sudden death overtime as they say in sports...

I'll leave it there for now, except to say it's a real eye opener, to realize that there isn't even a war.

[another bob]

Posted by Sebastion (here)
Yes it is definitely an eye opener when one realizes that the war is really within the self and when that is realized the battles and wars with others cease.

Would it were so, Brother, but that would be a bit premature, at least in most of our cases. Realization does not equal actualization, because there are deep subconscious programs that, although shaken, are not yet dissolved until brought to the light of conscious inspection, where they then can be seen through and transcended.
This is what is called the "cultivation" phase in traditional practice. In other words, once it is seen that all is a projectiuon of one's own psyche, then the possibility is finally there to really get a good look at what one has been up to, the war with themselves. It is a breakthrough that is absolutely necessary, but by no means the end of the story. In fact, ego-mind is not going to give up that easily, and can indeed co-opt even profound insight and fashion a shiny new self-image -- "See, now I have ended the internal war!" This turns out to be a big trap, so that is why the whole edifice needs to be taken apart brick by brick.

[another bob]

Posted by Jenci (here)
Took me much longer to get to the root cause of the codependancy which had always led me into needy, clingy relationships.

Thanks Jeanette!

What did you find when you got to the root?