The Compassion Files: Reality

[Tobin S.]

I want to start by saying that I don't harbor any hatred for my parents. We are all doing the best we can in this moment, even if it doesn't really look like it sometimes from the outside. Inside we are each a different world at this point in life as we know it on Earth. I'm hoping that in my lifetime we start to see the recognition on a large scale of the unity of humanity.

I happened upon an important realization in my world the other night and I wanted to share it with you all in the hope that it might help someone else.

When I was a little boy, my parents fought all the time. There didn't seem like a day that went by without them emotionally abusing each other and in turn their children who had to witness it. Little kids love both of their parents and there is nothing that hurts them more than to see them fighting each other. I would have rather taken a spanking than to see my mom and dad fighting.

My mom and dad often fought after they put me and my sister to bed. Angry voices and yelling would fill the house. We would try to block it out in our own ways. My sister, who was two years younger than me, would be frightened. We shared the same bedroom and one time she asked me what she could do to help alleviate her fear. I told her to "think." That was my little kid way of saying that when I heard my parents going after each other I would enter into a fantasy world and dream up all kinds of stories and adventures. My sister didn't know what I meant so she started singing when our parents would fight to help her escape the pain.

Yeah, it was a pretty sad predicament we all found ourselves in- all four of us.

One day when I was seven my parents were fighting in my presence. It was even worse than usual and the anger in my father rose to the level of violence. He struck my mother in the face. The marriage was over after that. My mother and father separated immediately and soon divorced.

The damage to all of us was deep and very painful. As for me it entirely shaped my life and left me in a hole that I've been trying to dig my way out of ever since, but maybe not in the way you might think.

Since reality had largely been intolerable for me since my birth, my level of awareness of the world outside of my head was low. I lived in a perpetual dream state only interacting with the world outside of my head for the basic necessities. I discovered my joy of reading not long after I was old enough to start comprehending novels. I was about ten. To this day, when you see me you can be sure that there is also a book nearby.

The problem with all of that was that my world wasn't authentic. I was mostly divorced from the reality that most people experience and I knew nothing of the spiritual realm that lies beyond ordinary reality. By the time I was twenty I had largely slept walked through my life. It was at that age that I became severely mentally ill.

As much as I tried to escape it, reality would not be denied. There came a time when the dream had to end. Sadly for me, the dream turned into a nightmare for ten years. Apparently my fear of reality was so great that I would have rather died than accept it. It came to that point of three occasions- my three hospitalizations. And we are just talking about the ordinary reality of Americans and not the greater more intense presence that is our spiritual destiny.

For the past 24 years the main thing I've been doing is learning how to be here in the present. That may sound very simple to a lot of people, but there aren't many of us who know how to do that fully yet. My reality now mostly consists of the ego dream state that is ordinary perception interspersed with moments of clarity. It seems like I've come a long way, but I've really gone nowhere. I've been right here right now the whole time- where we all are. I was just unable to see it.