When I was a young child they wanted me to join their religion. It was told to me that to do so would amount to a solemn oath that I would remain inside the cloud of a certain memorized dogma for my whole life and attend meetings regularly together with people who were likewise so defined in that same cloud to insure my allegiance. I balked. I could not. I felt I was a disappointment to them.  It was not stated to me but I said it to me. I felt isolated. 

The feeling that prevented my joining up came from a deep place in me that was repelled by the notion that whatever might be responsible for my mortal life in human form did not make me complete as I am. Something flinched at that. I really could not deny my feeling that these ones are trying to pull the wool over me. They believe a maker of us all appointed a human being to make up a language, and then use it to tell the rest of us who we are and what we must do and otherwise we will be quite severely punished. It seemed to be accepted without question that the language developed by men was actually being concocted by the creative force back of it all (and so every word of it true) and the dogma presented to us by learned scholars of that language was sacred and true. (Too damn bad for the slow ones in class who obviously are inferior.) That was enough to make me sick. All these teachers that were placed before me by that unchallenged principle could not be counted they were so many and none of them were admirable as a child sees right through their bullshit. But how long can a child resist? In my case, I held out nearly 40 years.

I was lonely as Hell much of it. But from time to time a poem or a song or a film or a book or a comedian or a stranger would cross my path to reveal that they were still holdouts. It kept me pressing onward.

Next I want to jump forward to a moment when I was so downhearted and miserable as a spy behind enemy lines who does not have a clue where or how often we meet that I was contemplating suicide. Instead, I uttered a prayer inside me to nobody: 

“If you are there, please help me by sending me someone who can understand me.”

Immediately, there before me appeared a man on a bicycle riding in my direction.  As he neared, I recognized an old acquaintance named Buddy.  We had not seen one another in about five years. Once we had both attended a six week evening program sponsored by the American Cancer Society to help people quit smoking cigarettes. Truthfully, I had attended at first solely because an attractive woman had told me she was going to attend. Even though my motives were not pure, I had not had a cigarette since. It is important to note that Buddy was the most attractive force in that gathering and most inspirational to me and the others. He was a singer-songwriter and it seemed we simply could not get enough attention from Buddy. Everybody wanted to get high with Buddy. Here he was now in answer to my prayer.

No dogma.  From that moment until today, 34 years and some change, my life has taken a new direction and has unfolded as a dream I had to be awake to dream. No dogma. Awake in my own skin. Within a year of meeting Buddy for the second time I had lost all regrets concerning my difficult past and without them have I sailed like an arrow sent forth from a mighty bow! That’s my story.  Simply put, I reunited with my true nature by recognizing that nature in my Buddy like he is a mirror of some sort. Any swan can tell you that is reason to celebrate!