I never felt anything but special about this fact. I didn’t find anything about who I am according to my birth parents many years later, in my thirties. I realized long ago that who I am, is who I decide to be. Not what the paperwork says.
3
“Go on try it.” I took the joint from my friend and took a big hit. I remember coughing my lungs out and everyone laughing. I was on the corner of my block with my sister and two neighbor kids that I hung out with when I was ten years old. That was the first time I smoked weed, or did any drug for that matter. After I was done coughing my lungs out I took another hit. This time it was a little smoother and I started to feel it. Panama Red. Sinsemilla wasn’t invented yet. Cocaine hadn’t hit the scene yet. This was about ten years before Scarface. Miami was desolate. The stores on Lincoln road were mostly empty. There were ten kids on the beach and I knew them all. Red sidewalks, I remember skate boarding on red sidewalks to the fishing pier to buy dime bags or nickels of weed then skating all the way to Haulover ramp to smoke it with my pals.
Miami was an amazing place to grow up as a kid. My dad would go to the racetrack on first street and drop me off to go surfing. It was a time of discovery for a lot of people. It was an enterprising time. A lot of people who could keep their head on straight got really rich in those first years. Miami was the hub. Wherever drugs were going in this country, they came through Miami first. Florida people always ran the show. It’s in their blood. I can’t tell you how many times growing up my friends would call me and tell me that bails were washing up on the beaches up and down the coast. We would be crawling through the sea oats pushing bails back to the car. Then we would get it home and have to lay it put and dry. We would make a coca cola water mixture and spray it out to get the taste of the ocean off it. We called it Seaweed.
After that first joint I bought an ounce of weed, five fingers, Panama Red for $25 dollars. I rolled up 50 joints and sold them at school a dollar a piece. I was sold out the first day. I was hooked. Damn sure beat working at the cement factory near my house which was my previous job.
Pretty quickly I was buying Quarter pounds and selling ounces to my friends. I always had a good business mind. I had no problem doubling my money, which was the standard rate of profit I felt. I had even less of a problem spending what I made. I did that for a few years with no problems. I had a little bit saved up, a few thousand dollars is a lot when you are fourteen years old. I started living the life I dreamed about.
I started going on surf trips a lot, me and a few of my friends would skip school and drive up the coast and surf all day then come home and skate an abandoned skateboard park near my house until the cops came and kicked us out. Later on we started taking real surf trips, we would fly to Puerto Rico or Costa Rica and surf for a week or two. I knew enough to put a bunch of weed on the street to sell, so that I had money waiting when I came back. I always had a dealer mentality. Everyone in Miami did. It’s just how we grew up.
4
“So do you understand?”
I thought about it for a moment. It was a lot to take in when you are fourteen.
“I think so. Can you explain that auto pilot thing to me again?” I was sitting in the park by my house with my friend Monty and his Dad, Michael, and his Uncle Tony smoking joints. These two were traditional hippies in the purest form. This was about 1976 I was a little more in tune, a little more into learning about the trip I was on called life than my buddy Monty, which didn’t seem to matter to his dad, probably because he knew Monty had heard it before and he lived with him so he was going to hear it again and again. So they really focused on me.
Michael continued with the patience of a man that is trying to really teach a kid something very important.
“Basically you can control every single aspect of your life with your mind. Whatever you want you just have to see it in your mind’s eye and it will be yours.”
“My minds eye?” I asked.
“Yes. I am going to teach you a word. Manifest. Do you know what that means?
“No.”
“It means to see what you want in your head first.” Monty answered. He was so proud he knew something.
“Yes.” Michael continued. “It means what ever you want, no matter how crazy it is, or far away is yours. You only have to see it first. And with practice you will get better and better at it. Your brain is the most powerful tool you have. Just like when you do pushups to build the muscle in your arm called your bicep, you can also do push ups for the muscle in your head called your brain. You can develop your bicep in a year, but your brain takes a lifetime. And it won’t start until you have this awareness conversation. Until that time a person is on autopilot. Most people never get out of auto pilot, but in the same respect they don’t know what they are missing out on because they have never realized their brains potential.”
Michael passed me the joint and I took a hit. Monty was goofing around a few feet away, which didn’t seem to bother Michael or his brother. I was focused on learning this and he saw it.
“To take it one step further, whatever you put in your temple, or in your mind, is what you will get out. That is why we don’t eat death.”
“Eat death? I don’t understand.”
“Eating dead things will keep you from reaching a higher state of being. Meat. Soda, Alcohol, Cheese and dairy products are all dead things that will slow down your growth. Eating live food will enhance your awareness. Everything is connected. We are all connected, every living thing on this planet. You need to realize this. Killing a bug is the same as killing any living creature walking the earth. Just because something is smaller than you doesn’t mean you can step on it. These are all living beings that have as much a right to exist as you do. The same as food, what you put into your temple is what you will get out. This is part of your training.”
I thought about this for a moment as a large beetle crawled across the picnic table we were sitting at. I put my finger in front of it and it crawled on my hand. I walked a few feet away and set it free on a tree branch then sat back down.
“Well done.” Michael said to me. “Now lets go one step further. Are you still with me?” I nodded yes.
“Your brain is the most powerful tool we have as human beings. We are no different than any other beings. They all communicate with eachother, we just do it through vocal chords. We have a third region in our brain, which lets us do this. But you can believe all creatures communicate with each other. That being said what you want to do is gain complete control of your brain. This is deep what I am about to tell you, so I want you to really pay attention.” I sat up straight and listened like it was the most valuable information I ever heard. Years later I realized it was.
“The first chance you have to control your brain is to control your dreams. And the first chance you have to control your dreams is the waking hours of the morning. When you start to wake up, and you know you are still in a dream, go back to sleep, realizing you are in a dream and control your surroundings in that dream. This like anything else takes practice to accomplish the first time, and more practice to get better at it. Still with me?”
“Yes. My brain controls everything, and the sooner I realize this and start practicing, the better I will be at it.”
“Exactly. And once you get comfortable with that, you will be able to control your dreams ay any time of the night. Once you get this it will never go away and you will be on the way to controlling ever aspect of your surroundings and the thoughts of other people.”
“Other people?” I asked.
“Yes. A stronger mind will always be able to control a weaker or less developed mind. That is what I mean by autopilot. Most people never have this awareness conversation. When you speak to a lesser developed mind you will always know it. You will be able to project the answer you want to hear by thinking it first and sending it to their mind. I know it all sounds amazing and impossible but it’s true.”
“It doesn’t sound impossible to me. In
fact it all makes sense.” I said. Michael smiled and handed me another joint.
“Do you know what Karma means?” Michael asked me, I nodded no.
“Karma is cause and effect. Just like everything is connected to you and you are connected to everything, whatever you do will come back to you. It’s like the laws of the universe. If you are a good person and you are good to other living beings then good things will happen to you in return. In the same respect, if you are a bad person and you are bad to other living beings, no matter who or what they are, then bad things will come back to you. Understand?”
“If I’m bad then bad will happen to me, and if I’m good then good will happen to me.” Michael smiled like he had achieved something special.
“Exactly. I think you’re getting it.”
“I’ve got it.” I said with a smile. Michael looked at his brother with a reassuring smile then looked back at me.
“You really are smart as a whip aren’t you? Try to understand this. You must always live in the now. The same way you just explained it to me. If you say you are going to be the best, it will never reach you because you are manifesting, or projecting it to the future. You have to say I AM the best. That way you project it to the now, to the present. That was my mistake saying you are getting it. You got it.” Michael smiled.
“Now that you have had this conversation you are different than most people you are going to meet. Your job is to help them reach the same plane as you.”
I nodded yes. I walked out of that park feeling different. Like I had been educated. I changed my diet and my train of thought from that day on and started manifesting every single thing I ever wanted in my mind’s eye first.
I got on my bicycle and rode home. The whole way I thought and felt like a different person. Like I had been given a gift that no one could ever take away because it was inside me. I couldn’t wait to go to sleep and start practicing what I had learned.
I got home that night and told my Mom about my new awakening and my new diet and she laughed and put hamburgers on the table for me to eat.
“ I don’t want to eat those any more.” I said. My mom looked at me like I was crazy.
“What are you talking about, you love hamburgers.”
“Not any more.”
“ We’ll see how you feel about them tomorrow.”
Three days later my mom was looking at me with great concern in her eyes.
“Just tell me what to buy and I will buy it. You have to eat.” Poor woman, she is trying to grow a tree. I handed her a list of things I would eat, basically a vegetarian diet. She got me what I wanted and started herself on learning about this whole plan. I think it helped both of us because the train of thought started to change after that. My parents were divorced, and my sister had moved out so it was just me and her. We have a very special bond, which I think opened her mind to a new train of thought. I never ate meat again, or soda or alcohol. It took me awhile to control my dreams, over a year. But when I finally did everything else started to fall into line. Whatever I thought up happened. In fact it got so strong in me I had to be very careful to not to imagine bad things because they happened just as easily as the good thoughts. Basically the better I treated myself and my world, and my fellow man, the more powerful I got. I started to get addicted to it. I started to get comfortable with it. It became second nature to me. I began manifesting everything single thing I wanted. Looking back I can easily say whatever I wanted and manifested I got. It just took me awhile to only manifest the good. This was a big lesson to learn, and took some time.
5
I stood there watching the hippie next door sit on his porch for what seemed like forever. He sat upright and motionless with his eyes closed. I slammed the garbage can lid and he didn’t open his eyes. I rang the bell on my bicycle over and over but he didn’t open them. “HEY.” I yelled but he didn’t open them. I had seen him out there before, and I always wondered what he was doing. I was about twelve. When they first moved next door I thought they were weird. We had hippies on the right and Surfers on the left.
There were love-ins at the park near my house, and thousands of hippies would show up for these.
“Wake up.” I yelled again. He didn’t move a muscle. I stood there a while longer waiting, finally he opened his eyes. I walked over to him.
“What are you doing?” I asked. He smiled at me the way you would smile at a little kid.
“Meditating.”
“What’s that?” I asked. He thought about that for a moment.
“ I was leaving this place.” He said very calmly.
“No you didn’t. I was watching the whole time. You were sleeping siting up.” He had a lot of patience dealing with an obstinate little kid. I walked over to where he was sitting. He had a bong on the table with some weed and some cashews. I had never been over to their house before because my mom didn’t want me going over there.
I looked into the living room and he had tie dyes and tapestries hanging all over. You could smell incense and home cooking.
“So what were you really doing?” I asked again. “I know you were sleeping cause I yelled and you didn’t wake up.”
“ I told you I was meditating.”
“What’s meditating?
“I told you, I left this place for awhile.”
“While you were sitting here?” I asked him.
“Exactly.” I thought about this for a second.
“I don’t get it.” I said, and I really didn’t.
“Well, did you ever want to go somewhere and you can’t? Or did you ever not want to be somewhere you were stuck at? When you meditate your body stay where it is and your mind and spirit goes to another place. It doesn’t happen over night. It takes great practice over long periods of time. I have been meditating longer than your alive.”
“What’s your name?”
“Peter, My friends call me Pete. What’s yours?”
“David. Are you old?”
“Older than you. I am twenty two. Are you old?”
“Hell no, I’m brand new.” He laughed at the honesty only a little kid has.
“Would you like to learn how to meditate?”
“Yes.” I said without hesitation. The thought of being to what I would later describe as projecting myself somewhere else was very appealing to me, even at that early age. He moved some of the cushions around so I could sit down.
“Sit here crossed legged, Indian style, and put your hands on your knees. Get comfortable. I sat the way he was, facing him.
“Now you have to deeply concentrate. You have to close your eyes and try to turn off the voice in your head.”
“What voice? I don’t have a voice in my head. He smiled again.
“Everyone does. Just listen and you will hear it. The voice in your head talks so much you don’t even notice it. It’s the voice that tells you everything, what you want, when to be home, wonder what’s for dinner. You must turn this voice off that is the first and most important part. This should be easier for you because you are so young your mind is not polluted with thoughts that you have accumulated over the years. This is much harder for an older person. So close your eyes and breathe in deep through you nose and out through your moth. Breathe slow long and deep. When you push the air out, push it all out and hold it out for a couple of seconds. Now this next part is very important, this will help you turn your voice off. Whenever you breathe in think, IN. Whenever you breathe out, think OUT. Whenever the voice talks to you only think IN or OUT. Do you understand?”
“I think so. In and out.”
“Exactly. Now close your eyes and sit very still. We will meditate together.
I closed my eyes and tried to do exactly like he said. I sat there for a little bit, maybe five or six minutes then opened my eyes and looked at him, Peter was sitting motionless with his eyes closed. He didn’t open his eyes and said to me. “Shut your eyes and breathe.” I did so and tried for about ten more minutes. I opened my eyes.
>
“This isn’t easy. The voice in my head keeps talking.” Peter opened his eyes and smiled.
“You did good. You stayed quiet with your eyes closed longer than the grown ups I teach the first time.
“Does it really work? About what you said leaving your body?” I asked. I was really interested.
“It does, but you have to practice.”
“Can I come over and practice again some time?”
“DAVIIIIID!” My mom walked out of the house and screamed my name for dinner.
“I gotta go.” I turned around and jumped off his porch.
“David,” Peter said. “Good to meet you. Come over anytime.”
“Thanks. Good to meet you too.”
I ran home and my mom was giving Peter stink eye. She didn’t want me hanging out over there. Peter didn’t see her though. He went back into a trance.
6
“Wake up.” Was all I heard, it sounded like it was in my dream.
“Come on Lover boy, wake up.” I looked up and there were my two pals, Steve and Gary, standing over me with big smiles on their faces.
“You have fun last night?” Steve asked pulling me out of the bed.
“ You are a regular Casanova. She woke up the whole neighborhood.” Gary said laughing.
I looked to my left and the beautiful girl I took home, Marie was gone. It was the first time I had ever slept with a girl, and at fourteen I could easily say I was in love.
“Come on out, breakfast is getting served.” Gary said as he went back to the kitchen. Steve sat on the edge of the bed.
Becoming A Son Page 2