Hello everyone. Welcome to VB's website.  A few months ago I asked my dear friend Andrew Reitsma - artist extraordinare - to create a website  for me.  Among other things, Andrew designed the book cover for VB's  book  "The Bare Bones of the Buddha's Teaching" plus his amazing Dharma Tree that graced the Long Beach Meditation sacred space. Of course he politely asked what I wanted to do with my web site, but when it came down to actuality,  I was quite stumped. Not the first time I have been stumped by reality. Long ago a friend once reminded me that there's a lot of difference between playing house and deciding who takes out the garbage. That was over forty years ago and it has taken a lifetime for me to understand Rebecca's wise words. 

So what do I want to do with VB's website?  Ah, there's the rub, and obviously something Andrew needed to know. My initial impulse was to jump into an autobiography, which seems an appropriate project for a 77 year old man who has lived a most interesting life.  But the logistics of formatting an autobiography on a site where "scroll down" gets completely unwieldy after 20 pages (and more), I acceded to Andrew's initial recommendation and have surrenderd to a Blog! Eek! I hate the sound of it. "Resistance is Futile" sayeth the Blog.  But here I am and here you are, and here we are together.  I hope you will find some of of the essays that I wrote for the Long Beach Meditation Newsletter useful.  Also, I hope to include a few transcriptions of the many Dharma talks I offered to the sangha every Sunday for a period of 20 plus years.

A brief explanation for my tendency to refer to myself as VB:  This inclination began when I stayed in a small Cretan village forty years ago, and it only got worse after years of  one and two month silent meditation retreats. My excuse is that "I" have gotten contaminated by too much Buddhism, which makes referring to this being as VB slightly less of a bitter pill to swallow.  Hopefully you will be able to overlook this little aberration.  

So let us begin with a Dharma talk I gave last year

Falling Off the Razor's Edge

One again our annual Long Beach Meditation Benefit rolled around which meant, for me,  one thing above all else: Time to retrieve my Roland digital piano from the closet and start practicing again. Some of you know that I was a professional musician until age 49, at which point I moved from New York City to California, obtaining a Masters and Doctorate degree in clinical psychology.  Musicians are a lot like old soldiers, we never die - we just fade a way, so it was natural for me to keep writing songs long after there was a venue in which to perform them, and I must confess, initially, I was happy that our annual Benefit gave me an opportunity to sing some of my songs to those of you who attend the Benefit each year. For a musician, even a captive audience is better than no audience at all!  Actually, for some musicians this might be the ideal situatioLast year it was clear that the time had come to make a graceful exit from the stage and let other younger musicians take my place.  We hired a great kirtan group who, along with our marvelous Addie, made beautiful music. I played fewer songs, and to tell the truth did not enjoy the experience nearly as much as I had in past years.  It was far more exhausting than in previous years, and there was not the “rush” that every musician feels from performing.

Soon after last year’s Benefit, I went to the Forest Refuge for 6 weeks and, upon returning, put my old friend, my Roland piano, in the closet for the first time in 12 years. When our Board decided to move the date of our Benefit from November to September 21 this year, I discovered that our kirtan group was already booked.  We also considered shaping the evening around a “name” guest speaker, but that fell through as well, so - out of the closet came my old trusty Roland piano, and one month before “B”Day” I started practicing again, wearing headphones late into the night.   

What songs to sing?  This is always an interesting challenge because I have written many songs over the span of 45 years. One of the songs that I decided to play and sing was my very first song.  I had never even tried to write music until that day in 1964.  I sat down at the piano, started to play a melody and out came words and music.  Who knew?  I think the song came as a reflection of some deep psychological transition that was occurring; a child was beginning to realize that he was no longer “appropriate” in a 26  year  old body.  Or perhaps better said, he realized that he was living in a world that he no longer understood.  I called the song  “Mystery.”

When did I stop believing in                              

Fantastic things, silly schemes                            

Mystery?

I can remember the way I used to                               Believe in magic,                                       Mystery.                                                                                                                   Children play a thousand games;                                                           They know the rules they know the names.                                

Grownups are confusing me;                                                                   They play a game called reality,                                                     

But they’ve forgotten the reasons why;                                                  They can’t remember the names.                                                   

Can you remember a place so tender,                                                    With music, magic,                                                                                Mystery?

Over the years, I realized something that was rather surprising, I can write a melody almost as easily as I can write a sentence. In truth, I could sing a Dharma talk without one doubt.  Nor would the melody be a simple “sing song,” operetta. It would be interesting and complex.  Where does that ability come from? Years ago, it occurred to me that this is partly due to my mountain heritage. Nashville is not an accident.  Melodies are in our blood.  Entire families play and sing religious songs, country songs, mountain songs, bluegrass songs.  My mother made up tunes that she sang to us, and so did my grandmother. This is not to mention that (probably) the greatest English composer remains to this day one William Byrd (1543 - 1623). A fact I have always been somewhat overly attached to! This brings me to the subject of this personal essay: Making a Melody.

What is a melody?  It is combination of musical notes, strung together in a rhythmic pattern, to create something the mind recognizes as familiar.  A melody is somewhat analogous to a sentence.  It has a beginning, a middle and an end.  I started to say that a melody is similar to a phrase, but a phrase is a group of words that form a unit within a sentence. It still needs a subject and a predicate.  A melody does not really need anything other than its own unique combination of notes. I can hum Gershwin’s “Summertime” without his lush orchestration or DuBose Heyward’s haunting lyrics, and the melody still plucks at my heart strings.

But a melody cannot be too long!  It seems that a melody has to be short enough for the mind to be able to "hold" it in memory.  I noticed long ago that many of our great composers wrote extraordinarily brilliant compositions with rich and complicated orchestration but often their melodies were more like phrases rather than sentences. When studying for composition classes at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, many of us would make up dummy lyrics for the famous melodies of Mozart (one of the best melody makers). The famous "rocket" melody of Symphony number 39 went "Mozart's in his closet, let him out let him out let him"  Never forgot that one. Or ""Its a bird , it's a plane, not it's Mozart." 

if you cannot repeat it, it probably is not such a good melody. Although a melody stands alone, it is how it fits in the context - the way that it “intermingles” with the harmonic structure that makes a melody truly memorable. For instance, if you change the harmony (the chords that “support” a melody) from a major to a minor key, that same melody will immediately feel more somber or sad. Simple chords tend to make a melody “feel” more simple; complex chords (for instance a jazz chord) make a melody feel more interesting. 

In New York, I once gave a workshop for singers, teaching them to experience the way the texture of a note changes when the underlying chord changes. I played “Here’s That Rainy Day” by Jimmy Van Heusen, just about the most perfect ballad ever written. It was Johnny Carson’s favorite and probably Frank Sinatra’s as well. The melody begins with two "d" notes in G major on the word "Maybe." Then the "d" note repeats on the word "I." But then Van Heusen does a remarkable thing, he repeats the same "d" note a fourth time on the word "should" but changes the underlying chord to B flat which totally changes the feeling or texture of that same note. "Maybe I should have saved those leftover dreams.” He does the same thing on the octave "d" on "leftover." Trust me.  It is pure genius.

There is no doubt that the ability to physically feel those textural changes is part of what makes a great singer truly great. Every time Carmen McRae came to town I would head to the Blue Note in NYC and listen to her with skin, bones, blood and marrow. I would watch her like a laser - how her feet tapped perfect rhythm while she played that piano and sang with that wonderful voice.  If that is not true communion between performer and her audience, I have no idea what the word means. Carmen felt the music in her body in a way that cannot be described in words. 

So I can hum the melody of “Summertime” and enjoy it greatly, but oh when I add the lyrics! 

“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy.                                Fish are jumpin’  and the cotton is high.                          Oh your daddy’s rich, and your mamma’s good lookin‘                              So hush little baby, don’t you cry.”

Who can describe this?  Such meaning and feeling comes flowing through! Then add Gershwin’s lazy, gorgeous chords and rhythms underneath the lyrics with that melody and you have a song that has been “covered” by some 30,000 different artists since he wrote it in 1935.  Will there ever be a soul that is not touched by this song?  I truly hope not.

Over the course of many years, and surely as a result of meditation, my mind has become increasingly less disturbed by cascading thoughts - the constant mental chatter so ubiquitous as to seem completely normal.  Slowly, I began to realize that when there are no thoughts running through the brain, when silence begins to spread like a still forest pool, my mind “hums” two notes, over and over!  (And Lord help me, over and over.)  I probably noticed this as a distraction decades ago, but perhaps about eight years ago when I was at a retreat at the Forest Refuge I started to really notice it and, needless to say, found it to be quite annoying. “This is not the silence of an advanced meditator!” I thought. 

 Later, I discovered that it is quite easy to breathe that pattern away.  In other words, if I focus on the in and out breath, the mind goes into a deeper mode of silence and my two notes vanish.  As we know, concentration takes the mind into ever deeper modes of stillness, layer by layer. 

In musical terminology, the two notes my mind hums are called a "perfect fourth" - D to G creating a boring “GG - DD -- DD - - GG.”  Now this is not what one would call a melody - actually it’s more like a phrase,

But it might be a good beginning for a melody. If you invert the two notes, you have what is called a "perfect fifth."  So as I was preparing for the Benefit performance, I decided to see if I could write a melody with just those two notes (rather than “Johnny One Note,” I would be “VB Two Notes”). I was able to write a fairly interesting song - although the melody was not complete; it longed for at least one more note. I found that fascinating, and it reminded me of Murray’s Bowen’s theory that a dyad of two people in relationship  is by definition unstable. My thought is that a dyad of two people is stagnant - which perhaps is what makes it unstable.  Most couples need a third person (a triad) to stabilize their relationship. Frequently that third person is a child who is needed to stabiliz the relationship.  It's sobering to think that we need someone else to talk about, and too often to blame  as our " problem." 

Oi Vey!  So I conclude that a melody needs at least three notes. 

If we could strip away the thinking chatter that endlessly runs through the mind, I wonder if we would discover that all human brains hum some combination of musical notes? Perhaps a person from India would hum a different interval of notes from, say, a person from Japan. My perfect fourth “GG DD DD  GG’  creates that awful, dreadful sound of police car sirens coming ever closer in The Diary of Ann Frank. Invert it and it becomes "Here Comes the Bride."  

Are we actually making music all the days of our lives? I wonder. It sounds rather hokey I suppose, but I suspect that our brains actually hum notes all the time. Many meditators on longer retreats report that they cannot get a certain tune out of their head, and it can drive then crazy! Perhaps they have some musical tendency, but I don’t think so. Our wonderful Jane Broadwell reports that she used to hear amazing ,seemingly original orchestral works even though she has no particular musical inclination. This makes sense to me. My suspicion is that when Jane began to hear this extraordinary music, the brain was escaping from the tyranny of relentless words.

Musicians make music all the time, philosophers philosophize all the time, psychologists psychologize all the time, teachers teach all the time. But it occurs to me that underneath all philosophizing or psychologizing, under all religious or intellectual speculation lies music. Perhaps our nervous system literally sings. I think that it does. It is said that each of the chakras in our body emits a different musical tone. Sustain the sacred sound of Aum and you will produce a musical tone, You cannot stop it from becoming a musical note. In fact, try to sustain any vowel and you will automatically produce a tone. 

So I wonder what it is that I am actually hearing when my brain hums its two notes? Could it be something universal?  Is it part of some harmonic chord that hums in the universe?  What if I were able to embrace those two boring notes that continually play as the unique “ground” of my own unique melody? Rather than cursing the limitation of a brain that only plays an interval of two notes (surely Mozart heard much more!) what if I could realize the infinite possibility of a life lived as a melody that changes in feeling based on the context of my days? What if could remain connected to my unique melody as it sounds through the good times and the bad times?   What if we could each hear the melody of our lives? 

Introduction

In the closing days of December, 1977, I started writing a letter "to whom it may concern."  It was bitter cold that December month, one of the coldest spells to hit Southern Europe in decades, and I had finally given up trying to communicate in fractured  Greek to Mrs. Kalazankis's son, who managed Hotel for Rent. "Can you purchase a small heater for my room?" I had been staying there for four months, just yards away from the soothing sounds of the Mediterranean Ocean as it gently  rolled in and out, each time covering the brightly colored pebbles on a small beach just beneath my balcony while making a wonderful crackling sound. Truly, for me, those sounds felt as if I were being held and rocked back and forth by the sea, the eternal Mother. God knows this was precisely what my soul needed. 

For whatever reason my question was always answered with a wide smile and a nod, this after I usually added in fractured Greek, "I'll gladly pay for it myself." But a heater never appeared, and my breath appeared more disturbingly vapor-like on particularly windy days. Thus, the bright morning sun rising on the horizon across the sea, looked ever more inviting, as I slowly grew tired of trying to figure out how to invent a heater out of my little heating coil meant for tea. One day, I asked someone walking on the beach, "Where is that?" and pointed in the general direction of Heat. "Egypt" was the reply. Within days I was on a bus to Iraklion, first to have my letter copied, and, soon after, to board a plane to Cairo. Later, I wondered if Nikos really understood my question, or if he was simply "shining me on" - an expression that I had never heard until I moved to California in 1990, and one that I do not particularly like. Why wouldn't he want to buy a heater for me if  I was willing to pay for it?  I had intended to stay in Crete until the spring of 1978 and had no plans about "next" other than a vague intention to reach India by March, where I planned to study yoga, and thus become amazingly enlightened as soon as possible.  

Was my question too soft? In retrospect, it occurs to me as I look back, that all my questions were too soft and hesitant. I was always so afraid of rejection. The great Hindu sage Sri Ramakrishna said that we are all either baby moneys or cats when it comes the spiritual quest. Baby monkeys grab hold of their mother and cling on for dear life as she leaps from tree to tree.  Kittens wait for their mother to pick them up by the neck, hanging on passively while as she carries them from one place to the next.  For sure, I belong to the cat family. 

But I could not leave the gentle healing of the sea or the inner struggle of a lonely frightened child who made his first steps of growing up in Hotel for Rent without some expression of gratitude and a deepest goodbye to this crucial part of my life. Of course, I had not the slightest awareness that this was what was actually happening when suddenly, a few days before the new year of 1978 I sat down and started writing "A Letter from Crete."  I've written many songs and lyrics, especially when I was a musician in New York, and numerous essays for something we called the Dharma Corner for the Long Beach Meditation sangha. In  2010 I finished a book called "The Bare Bones of the Buddha's Teaching," but never, since those final magical days in Crete, have I experienced such a spontaneous burst of creativity. It was an urgency and thrill, but perhaps more amazing, it was a profound feeling of connectedness that filled my every waking moment. 

But after copying the Letter in Iraklion and then flying off to Cairo, what was I to do with my xeroxed letter?  Was it possible that I had managed to write a major work of art? Could it, should it be published thus changing the entire world for the better?  I doubt that I knew the meaning of hubris, back then, and for sure I did not understand the grandiosity of narcissistic wounds, but I decided to hold off on the fame that was sure to come eventually, and postpone saving the world.  For now I had more immediate concerns.  I was on my way to Cairo, then Alexandria, Beruit, Istanbul, Tehran, Kabul, and riding an impossibly swinging, swaying bus down the twisting Kyber Pass with the worst upset stomach of my life, to the huge plains spreading out to the horizon below. I stopped in Peshawar, Pakistan, spent a couple of nights in Lahore (to recover my shot nerves) and finally arrived in New Delhi in March 1978. 

That was over 40 years ago, and this VB is now 77 years old.  Eventually, he became a psychotherapist, loosely grounded in the Jungian tradition, and founded a meditation center in Long Beach California. At some point he became more comfortable referring to himself as "VB" and using the personal pronoun "he," which I hope you will kindly ignore. Perhaps you will chalk it up to too much Buddhism in an overly impressionable mind.  From the vantage point of looking back over the years of my life,  I now see my trip to Crete as a midpoint correction in trajectory, not unlike what happens with every space ship traveling to distant worlds. I've often thought about that metaphor, of how we each need midpoint corrections, and how incredibly fortunate we are when they come. Ta Hui, the great Ch'an master said that these pivotal moments in our lives require a "burst of power,"as if the battery needs to re-charge before our little ship can change direction. I have no reason to doubt his insight. Now, as I look back at my life, everything seems to divide into before Crete and after, and  for whatever reason, I now wish to share the stories of my life with you.  

A few program notes:  I have always intended to share "A letter from Crete," ever since I copied it 40 years ago. But there is also a lengthy journal I wrote in Barre, Massachusetts, December 1987, at the end of a three month Vipassana meditation retreat where I experienced a psychological/physiological event that literally rewired my nervous system. I do not believe this statement comes from narcissistic grandiosity, but will gladly leave that judgement up to you. Also there is quite a funny but raw journal  of a two month mindfulness retreat that I attended in Lumbini, Nepal in 2010. There are lyrics, dreams, poems and essays that I want to share plus amazing moments that occurred with dear souls who sat with me in psychotherapy.  How to weave all of these pieces into a cohesive quilt-like fabric? I have absolutely no idea!   

I am completely inspired by Carl Jung's autobiography, "Memories Dreams and Reflections." He wrote it at age 83 from the vantage point of a mind that still remained  conscious and as bright as day. This alone is remarkable, isn't it?  What if most of us who have come near to the end of our conscious lives were to sit and write our stories? How we got here from where we began: no bragging, no complaining, no subtle covering up of shadow aspects, just the story of our lives?  If you are like me, you might consider attempting such a project, but then discount it as pointless at best and narcissistic at worst. "Who am I to write about my life, and why go to the trouble?" This is a killer of the creative impulse. While "Who am I?" is perhaps the most profound Zen koan, it is also a soft, doubting whisper coming from a heart without a deep belief in its own uniqueness and self- worth. If God really did say "I am that I am," perhaps saying the same words is not exactly a mortal sin? 

Carl Jung had every reason to go to the trouble of sharing the stories of his remarkable life as would any other genius from Aristotle to Mozart from Nietzsche to the Buddha. By the sheer fact of their struggles and accomplishments, they have something important to say to all of us. Perhaps genius (like beauty) is truly it's own excuse for being, needing no other reason for describing how it grew from child to adult. Clearly, for thousands of years, we humans have always been enthralled and inspired by the accomplishments of the larger than life humans: A Buddha, a Christ, even a Michelangelo or Mozart. Our heroes. But I wonder if we have been so overly focused on the extraordinary that we have overlooked the beauty and grace that is present is every small, ordinary human life. Perhaps the only people who have done this over the past one hundred and fifty years are our psychotherapists, the ones who have sat and listened as we told them our stories. 

For sure, this one writing is no genius! As a psychotherapist I remember many times noticing how a client was far more brilliant than I. For whatever reason, this never seemed to bother me at all.  I always admired their intelligence which often bordered on originality.  One favorite memory is of a client's thoughtful response to a comment I  made about the transparent self:  "I don't have a peg in my brain to hang that one on." 

I suspect that in addition to not being a genius,  I share another drawback with those who might ask "Who am I to write about my life, and what is the point? " One feature of this VB psyche is a rather interestingly selective memory.  This trait would come as quite a surprise to many former clients.  I often heard their surprised exclamation, "How are you able to remember the name of my aunt June?" (Cousin Bill, brothers, sisters. grandmothers, etc.)  My response was that I seem to have a keen memory for the important things. 

While genius and memory are definitely related, my lack of memory issues are not entirely the result of stupidity. Freud spoke of a natural childhood amnesia, something like a veil of forgetfulness that separates the memories of our early childhood experiences from a later stage of development when a more cohesive ego consciousness emerges. A protective veil descends between the memories of a child going through potty training (accent the word "training") and all the other primitive feelings of love, need, envy, greed, isolation and hate that a little wild thing is bound by nature to strongly feel, and indeed is supposed to feel.  This protective veil is a shield which separates a child from memories of his or her early, intense feelings of shame and powerlessness, created mostly from the consistent trials and errors of mindless parents who had no business rearing a child in the first place. In this situation I have grown weary of good intentions which are not the most auspicious way for a child to begin its long arduous journey of growing up. 

One could argue that this VB as a child never quite achieved a cohesive ego consciousness at age four or five, an argument that is probably somewhat correct at least, but in any case, there is no doubt that he has never been one to cling to memories. It is as if there is a natural and quite efficient mental delete button that clears out long term memories that are not deemed necessary for skillful conscious functioning. "Unnecessary" is quite relative isn't it? What unconscious memories are no longer necessary to skillful conscious functioning, and what memories have become a burden and hindrance to us?  Memories that tell me who I am can also keep me locked in a prison called "myself," as Krishnamurti brilliantly pointed out.  

One Sunday I asked the Long Beach Meditation students this question: "If  there were a machine that allowed one to erase all his or her early memories, the only catch being that it had to be all memories both pleasant and unpleasant, who would choose to do that?"  Not one hand was raised. Actually, I thought a couple of hands might go up at least haltingly. "Why" I asked, genuinely surprised. "I would never be willing to give up my good memories." came the response. 

So, who am I to write the story of my life? And why go to the trouble? Perhaps those very questions can be answered only in the doing. I suspect this is so. I suspect that this endeavor is another mid course correction in this little space ship's journey from the unreal to the Real. Wilfred Bion once said to a client, "Here you are, the most important person you will ever meet in your life, and you don't even like yourself." Perhaps sharing stories of this life is the logical continuation of my journey after I left Crete. It is embarrassing to say that I am the most important person in my life. Yes? For you also?  But who else can tell your stories other than the one who has lived them all of your life? 

As you will find from reading my Letter from Crete, I was extremely concerned with the question of "what is a heathen?" It took a number of decades for me to finally admit why this was such a seminal question in my life, and only now in the sharing with you does it truly come to consciousness. This will become abundantly clear in another letter I wrote many years ago, a letter to Alan.

I value Jung far too highly to make light of the title of his autobiography, a title he care-fully chose, I am quite sure. This is not to mention my awe at his astonishing accomplishments, a deep respect that only increases as I grow older. But it occurs to me that small is not necessarily meaningless, and triumphs do not have to be earth shattering nor broadcast across the globe. Growing up is an intensely personal accomplishment and I believe that it is significant beyond words. This is why memories dreams and reflections must include, for this writer, rejections, which are, after all, the fertilizer for each psychological unfolding.  

Just as a child must take it's first tenuous step on the long journey of growing up, a beginning simply must begin at some point. But how hard it is to begin for each of us!  I wonder if a day goes by in our lives that we don't feel a deep urge to start all over, to chart a new course leading to a brave new world. It seems to me that every morning when we wake something fresh and new is present in our consciousness, fighting perhaps to emerge from an ancient unconscious conditioning that pulls us inexorably back into pattern. Jung once said that he is "conservative to the bone" and for sure any reading of Jung illuminates his meaning. What is more conservative than an instinct? Indeed what is more conservative than the masculine and feminine archetypes he so brilliantly intuited as impersonal forces that demand our attention, to put it mildly. I suspect that Freud was liberal to the bone, and thus came a titanic conflict between conservatism and liberalism that was in fact a personified  struggle between the two ancient forces of Siva the destroyer of the old and unnecessary and Vishnu the preserver of the good and necessary.  

How difficult for us to remain connected to that tiny sprig of new growth that is present when we wake up each morning in the presence of a profound tendency to sink into the matrix of unconsciousness.  W.D.Winnicott calls that new growth the hidden part of us waiting to emerge into our consciousness. It is like a seed that is waiting deep within each of us.  

Chapter one: Before Crete

Waiting for Jim: memories long forgotten: 

Recently I was sitting in my  dentist's chair waiting for a short procedure when her assistant came to tell me that the doctor would be a little late. "How late?" I asked, mostly only curious and not with much energy on the question.  I had given myself a two hour space between this appointment and a session with a client. I really like my dentist who happens to have the same name as one of my dearest friends from my New York days, and I really like her quick intelligence. I love watching her work with such skill and kind assurance while I stare at her with  gaping mouth and eyes fixed on her serious face.  I once told her that she would have made an excellent psychotherapist, which is not a compliment that comes frequently from this VB. 

Fifteen minutes later the assistant came back into the room, apologizing  that the doctor would be delayed a while longer,  and after I made a less casual and more energetic query, it became clear that my dentist had had to step away from the clinic for a few minutes, but she would return in no more than 10 minutes. The thing is, even though I was in no hurry, I began  to feel an urgency about the situation, an urgency which made no rational sense at all. At about the 30 minute mark, quite beyond the supposed 10 minutes when she was to return, I took off the little paper napkin from around my neck, stood up, and with anger rising, was already at the door when the assistant came rushing in doing her best to smooth this byrd's ruffled feathers.  At this point, she left to  notify my dentist that I was leaving, and Dr. Marion came in immediately with appropriate and sincere apologies. There was still time to do the minor procedure, but I insisted that there was not enough time for me to get to my session- a complete lie - and we rescheduled for the following day.  

At that point I went merrily off to the grocery store, feeling a kind of relief as if I had escaped from prison. I still had plenty of time to meet my client at 12 noon. This feeling of freedom made absolutely no sense to me.  

Pondering my childish behavior, I found myself remembering a moment in New York in the 1980's when I was meeting a dear friend for dinner. At that time he was the editor of magazine,  and to say that he was a busy man is quite an understatement.  Approximately thirty minutes late,  he jumped out of a taxi, apologizing profusely, and  I started to scream right there in front of Grand Central Station. I had not the slightest ability to feel how awful this must have made him feel. 

What happened to cause such a sense of urgency after I had already waited with seeming patience and equanimity for close to the time my friend arrived?  I first discovered the answer to that question in a psychotherapy session with a psychoanalyst in Los Angeles, perhaps twenty years ago.  As I was describing to Dr Lassiter another similar incident where I went berserk after waiting for someone for thirty or forty minutes, she quietly asked, "What occurs to you when you think about waiting for someone? " I don't know," was my response. "The only thing that occurs to me was that I was born first before my twin brother Jim.  But that was fifty minutes before he was born, not thirty."  As I said those words, and saw the look on her face, I realized/felt how this little boy who had shared a space with his brother for nine months had to wait for him "outside" in a strange, new, alien world for fifty minutes. This is not to mention that his mother was totally involved in giving birth to his brother.  My mother's recollection is that I lay there quietly waiting, but I suspect she does not quite remember that this little baby grew increasingly agitated around the thirty minute mark. 

After having lived seven-seven years on this planet, this story still astonishes me. It strikes me with wonder, discouragement and hope. Wonder at the absolute power of psychic reality, something that we cannot see or touch. Nor can we know it by thinking about it. Jung says that there is no archemedian point by which the psyche can step outside itself in order to see itself. And yet he insists the psyche is nethertheless real. In fact it is existence itself.

Wonder also, as a psychotherapist who has seen how each of us has been formed by our  earliest experience, and how those experiences and the ones to follow in the next few years shape much of our future lives.   

Discouragement:  I actually gained this insight about waiting for my brother well over twenty years ago, but what use was that insight as I sat in the dentist's chair, with a growing sense of urgency and anger steadily rising? I suspect that most of us feel discouragement such as this when we discover that the insight we experienced, one we felt so sure would change our lives, vanished within a day or so. Insights are like sand castles that last for a moment and then disappear as the tide rolls in.  

Hope? Perhaps some sand castles miraculously survive the our human tendency to forget.   I have felt that "feathered thing" called hope even in the darkest moments of my life. and how sobering and humbling it is to realize that even though the little baby waited for fifty minutes, his brother did actually come. How many of us spend our lives waiting for some unknown brother or sister, father or mother who never came? 

"Singing in the fire"

In 1970, I participated in a Broadway musical workshop sponsored by BMI in Nashville.  I was traveling back to Tennessee from Arizona where I had been playing the piano in an exclusive resort in Scottsdale. There was an article in the Phoenix newspaper about a Victor Byrd who had been arrested for various dark and nefarious deeds, and the owners politely but firmly let me go that very evening. I suppose I was more than ready to leave because I don't remember making a peep about it. I stopped in Nashville in order to spend the night with dear friends from our Cincinnati Conservatory of Music days, and while at their house read an interesting article in the Nashville Tennessean. BMI, which sponsored a a workshop for musicians and lyricists in New York, was bringing the workshop to Nashville, where it would be led by  Lehman Engle, one of Broadway's most famous conductors. 

For purposes of brevity I'll skip the details of how interesting it was to interact with musicians who played their Broadway compositions on guitars, an oddity that is most likely no longer strange since   music genres have become increasingly blended over the years.  I do remember watching Lehman's  diplomatic  and elegant expressions as the listened to our music and lyrics. At the end of the workshop, I was surprised to learn that I had been named BMI's "musician of the year"and given a stipend of $3000. That evening, I had dinner with Lehman before he returned to his beloved Manhattan, and he said in no uncertain words, "You belong in New York, Victor, and I will personally hunt you down if your don't move there and join my workshop." With $3000 in my pocket, I moved to a small apartment on West 87th Street.  

One of the songs that I had sent to Lehman was set to lyrics written by an amazing woman named Jerry Wright. She worked with me and my beautiful friend Catherine on a night club act while we were students at the University of Tennessee. Her lyrics for us both were uncanny. It was as if she had a direct line into my private world as well as Catherine's. Here is what she saw in that young VB. 

The memories of those years from 1970 to 1977 are hazy now, but, by then, for sure the games I played had become a refrain of monotony. I was charming and charismatic, slightly manic, and a not little dangerous to those who dared to come too close. And many were drawn to this southern version of the Little Prince, Antoine Saint Exupery's beautiful and aching depiction of a Puer Aeternus, an eternal child. I wrote songs, played and sang my songs in a couple of clubs in Manhattan, played for Broadway autidions, coached and accompanied Broadway singers, played the organ in churches, and accompanied a most wonderful musician and generous human, Earl Rogers, who was cantor in a synagogue in Harrison, New York.  I got that job because Earl could not drive and needed an organist who had a drivers license.  

At the same time, I found, just a few blocks away from my apartment, the Integral Yoga Institute. My friend Phillip Moffitt, who was my trail blazer, urged me to try yoga, especially because of frequent episodes of tachycardia. In those days, I would go to St. Vincent's Hospital  because the emergency ward took anyone regardless of their ability to pay, and my enormous windfall of $3000 had vanished long ago. Thus, yoga eventually became an anchor that grounded my body and soul during those years. The heart episodes continued through the 70's, and there were many nights when I came home from St. Vincents on the subway, always to find Willy waiting at the door. He seemed to know that his friend had been cardioverted with electric paddles just hours before, and he always waited quietly and patiently for me to find the energy to take him outside. 

When I think of those years, I think of waking up and having to reinvent myself almost every morning, certainly many mornings. There was no "me" who lasted from one day to the next, and part of the games that I played were an elaborate disguise that masked a kind of desperation. Jerry Wright's  words, "Who I am someone must see, and explain to me a philosophy" still ring like a  bell tone of truth each time I remember those years. But those years gave me a measure of compassion for children locked in adult bodies who were incapable of understanding the games and rules of an adult world. One of the songs that I played and sang at Freddy's Supper Club was the first song I ever wrote, perhaps in 1963.  

Looking back, I think that I had lived with a "quiet desperation" since I was a little boy. The truth is that I simply did not fit in. Certainly not in the mountain town where I was born, but really not anywhere. I was an alien who somehow had landed on this strange planet. By the way, this is only half of the truth. I loved interaction with so many friends and family who were to me "native inhabitants" of this planet, those who had somehow incarnated into lives and relationships, and I loved our joy, fun and intense conversations. These interactions were never a lie to me, but they were only half the truth. 

The word "alien" is how the early Gnostics described a sense that they were spiritual (pneumatic)  beings who had gotten stuck in this physical reality. They were rebels who fought the early Church orthodoxy with its anti-symbolic, anti-psychological world view.  And they were a thorn in the Church's collective side, for at least the first three hundred years of Christianity. Slowly, the Gnostics were marginalized (to put it nicely) into irrelevance: more collateral damage from the inexorable rush of "progress." 

The struggle between the early Gnostics and the Church is an example par excellent of the endless struggle between conservatism and liberalism. Of particular interest to this writer however, is the fact that they are also an early example of what happens to heathens. It's hardly surprising that my instinct drew me in the direction of Gnosticism from the moment I first read about those ancient rebels who dared to oppose religiously and politically correct thinking. 

One night I was getting ready for bed, and Willy Byrd was lying next to me. What actually happened to me I have never been able to describe.  Perhaps it was simply a rare moment of grace, which is always completely unexpected. But suddenly, as I lay there, I knew that I would be okay in this life.  There was no Hollywood music, no brilliant lights, no colors, and I the words sound so utterly banal.  But this was the first moment in thirty two years of such a "knowing." Tears  streamed down my face as  I got up and went to my desk and wrote these words, 

I never have doubted that truth of being okay in this life since that unforgettable night. Another song that I sang was one that  I wrote about Willy.