November 20, 2009

• Book of the 1st Realization: A Personal Tale

  THE BOOKS OF THE REALIZATIONS: A series of philosophical/spiritual essays

  From the Philosophy section on my original website in 1999:  For years I have held to a belief system which incorporates lessons from life which I have learned. I call these lessons realizations. They lead to the final realization, from which humankind will embrace the Universal Mind. These beliefs are not new, and are not mine. They are realizations which affect everybody. With the Millennium upon us, I feel compelled to write down the history and origins of these realizations. This is a work in progress.

  The Personal Journey to the Realizations is over for the writer in the book of the Fifth Realization.
  From the beginning part of the foundation for AllThingsMike consisted of a philosophical discussion of existence and the existence of the Universal Mind, which supplants and replaces all religion and philosophical thought which has gone before. MFN 1999

  ---

  There are a lot of inspirational/spiritual blogs in the blogosphere. Some of the blogs I regularly read (and some written by some of my regular readers) delve deep into Buddhist, Christian, American Indian, Hindu, and New Age beliefs. Some of these blogs feature original thoughts, prayers, and promises, and some merely copy/paste material from other blogs/websites of note. The purpose of these inspirational/religious/spiritual sites is to give mankind a "hug" and let him know that he is not "alone" in the universe, and that whatever problems he is having in his corporeal existence, there is a "better place" somewhere and these sites help to propel man to that better place. Back before blogs, I began writing the "Books of the Realizations" and occasionally post an entry on my own "spiritual/inspirational" blog, "The Universal Blog".  (I do provide a link, as I do to all my websites, on the "AllthingsMike Universe" module to the left of this blog.) This is the first chapter in my own ongoing spiritual saga, "The Book of the First Realization." For those of you who might stumble across this entry and are interested in perusing the complete text, which comprises Five Books or Chapters, the complete Books of the Realizations are on the web HERE.  I will intersperse these five chapters among my entries on WhenWordsCollide over the next few weeks. Chapter One, or The First Book follows. MFN (Originally posted: 3/8/05)

  The Realizations
  the true story of faith and how it can be obtained.
  by Michael F. Nyiri

  
  THE BOOK OF THE FIRST REALIZATON

  
  A Personal Tale

  
  Many years ago, while much younger than I am today, one of my managers at a retail establishment I worked for which later went out of business said to me, "Someday when you get older, you'll come to the realization. You're full of spit and vinegar now, and seem to think you know what you want and where you're headed, but someday you'll find that you're wrong, all your dreams and wishes are exactly that, dreams and wishes, not reality, and when you reach this realization which comes with age, you will feel much better, and be much wiser."

  I always thought, of course, that this gentleman had reached his realization, and it had taught him the wisdom of which he wanted to impart to me.

  Years later, of course, I did reach the realization he was talking about, and I sighed and thought , "I think I might have known this all along,"

  When I was much younger than that, my parents instilled in me a sense of greatness due probably to the fact that I always received good grades in school. My mother in particular always called me "her little genius". For years as a youth, my upbringing was such that I felt myself superior, a "little genius", and I felt I knew things, that I was chosen. Real life taught me differently, of course, and this early realization taught that misconceptions can be disheartening. All of a sudden I wasn't a "little genius" at all. I knew nothing. And that taught me more.

  In the First Baptist Church where my family worshipped , we used to receive enlightening plaques and
  spiritual knick-knacks out of a glass fishing bowl when we memorized certain Bible verses and stories.
  I received many plaques and knick-knacks, The Church called the exercise "fishing". We were "fishers of men". By the third grade I wanted to be a preacher.

  My father was not a well man. He had had about eight or nine heart attacks by the time I entered Junior High School, and he could no longer attend Church on a regular basis. When the old pastor died, and the new pastor wanted to raise tithes to put a new, "modern" facelift on the Church, he came to our house one evening to talk to my parents. Although my father couldn't attend services any longer, and my mother stayed home on Sunday to be close to my dad, a missionary friend of the family used to take my brother, sister and I to Sunday School and Church each Sunday. The new pastor explained to my father that since he hadn't attended Church for a while, he in essence owed the Church for his back tithes. I can still remember hearing the heated discussion from my bed.

  I left the church that night. I was in the seventh grade.

  Throughout high school, I believed I was an athiest, agnostic at best. My goal at that time, around 1968 and 1969 was to found my own Church, a church of the heart, dedicated to some fundamental belief which or course I didn't know about yet. I had just lost my faith in God, I foolheartedly believed. Because of man's greed, specifically the pastor's at our family Church, I felt I had lost a deep faith in my existence and my capabilities, I began my search.

  I would preach to people at school that I wanted to found my own religion. I would base it on the spiritual exuberance then running rampant in the "Jesus Movement". Only it would not be just about Jesus. I felt as if Jesus was one of many great teachers throughout history, but the Christian religions were somewhat wrong in proclaiming him the one and only "Son of God." I felt another small realization, and planted a seed which has since grown astoundingly. It was an exciting time for me while in high school. During my life up to that point I had been completely sheltered, and with the explosion of "youth culture" on the college campuses , I felt now that I was a part of the rebellion, I became a "hippie" in spirit.

  When I went to college in 1971 I still had a sense of family values, however, living at home, buying my father's car with my allowance, and paying my parents rent even though the college campus was fifty miles away. A realization burrowed up from my conscienceness in college, and this was another blow to the psyche detailing that all my high school teachers, quick to jump on the "little genius" bandwagon, had been wrong. Instead of A's as in high school, I received B's and C's in college. The professors in college treated me like just another coffee bean passing through the grinder of life. I didn't feel "special" anymore, and this small realization widened my vision of life. College was a much bigger pond.

  My first real realization hit me like a hammer in 1972. When my mother suffered a bilateral stroke at 51while I was in my second year of college, I felt I had nothing left to live for. With time and emotional help from friends, I soon joined another church, a Pentacostal holy roller affair, and I tried to find a reason for existence. Then my father died of his 13th heart attack two years later. Life suddenly and seemingly without meaning changed for me. At twenty-one, and at a time when I felt an incredible need to experience the hedonistic pleasures of the secular world around me, I found myself without a familial rudder, fated to become my mother's legal guardian, in charge of her estate, and mourning the loss of this tight little womb into which I had always felt I had been placed.

  If, in fact, I possessed a "genius" it seems to me now that that was the time to exercise this great knowledge and wisdom. I was still a kid, however. Children grow up too quickly these days. Our "baby boom" generation felt we would always be children. We called ourselves "flower children". I had to grow up, and I countered the responsibilities being laid upon me by slipping farther and farther into the hedonistic pleasures of sex, drugs, and rock and roll which were rampant in the youth culture at the time. With my father dead, and my mother a virtual vegetable without speech nor recognition (I thought), I made the dreadful mistake of leaving her hospital room for the last time. In 1974 she still had three years left to live. I never saw her again and did not attend her funeral in 1977. To me she had died at the time of the stroke. She wasn't the same. I kept searching for answers with religion, with drugs, with pleasure, with pain. I was lost, but I hardly realized it.

  What I did realize was a need for connections in life, since my familial connections seemed to be ending. I had many friendships which kept me afloat. I couldn't find romantic love at that point, and I wrote many poems detailing my search for another half to complete my whole. There were Christian fellowship groups on one hand, and raucous Fraternity parties with college friends and buddies from work on the other. I was having my cake and eating it too. If I possessed "genius" at this point, I used it to juggle the various aspects of a double life. At work, in the retail industry, I first rose to a respected position as a department manager, then moved with the company to a new location in an area where the "youth culture" had been even more of an explosion than in my home town. The rewards of responsibility in the workplace served to fuel the hedonistic desires of my playtime. Old friends gave way to new friends, hardly "Christian" or spiritual in nature, and I dove into the fire of this newfound life with gusto. Playing with fire in this way had it's drawbacks however, and led to my second realization.

  Next Chapter: Wisdom and Questioning or click here for the rest of the story.

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