During the bike ride I sat down one evening and wrote about maps. This passage is an example of one facet of my approach toward overcoming the emotional scars. I recognized there was knowledge, but the question was, what knowledge would work for me? There were people who spent their whole lives studying psychology, but did they study the correct thing? What if they spent their whole career studying the wrong thing? What if they took the wrong path for me?

Somehow, I recognized the difference between different forms of knowledge. Some were useful; others took up valuable space and energy for the task at hand. I believed in what was described in the first vision about Eclectic Knowledge. I sensed the Eclectic Knowledge and it was inside me. I followed the path inside me, which was the correct path to solve the problem. Other people were smarter than me, more educated, and older; of course they were, I was only an adolescent, and couldn’t consistently impress anyone; but, my path was inside me. To follow the elder, the smarter, the more able was to fail, for my path followed through Eclectic Knowledge, which came from God, and the intelligentsia of the universe!

Sounds crazy! But thankfully I believed it. If you the reader can’t tell yet, I seemed to be driven by an unknown power. This power took over at some point. I talked about getting knowledge from somewhere, and “hidden wisdom.” On February 7, 1977, I wrote:

“I don’t remember how I knew how to dissipate. It seemed pretty obvious that I could, sort of like looking at a lamp, and theorizing if you pushed it, it would fall. Maybe it was God. It quite possibly was this “hidden wisdom” I sometimes have. I sometimes know things without having any practical experience to know them. Sometimes I hear voices in my sleep teaching psychology.”

On Oct. 2, 1977, I wrote:

“I’m battered and bruised, but I’m successfully dissipating everything. I’m as hard as rock. I’m getting strength from somewhere.”

So as you read about how my path lead to overcoming the torment, consider your path, and pray that you’re on the path God has chosen for you! See that being on the right path can make all the difference, even when it comes to overcoming the impossible.

At this point I’d like to say that…

…In the description of the hospital experience, I spoke about prayer and superstition and how these and similar ways of thinking are related to the thoughts of a two year old, specifically, my thoughts as a two year old. I said that I had begun several dangerous thought patterns in that I believed thoughts could come true. To think a thought, I concluded, was to want the thought. To think about victory, is to want victory. To think of death is to want it, and so on…
Everyday we hear about a coach who wears a shirt or piece of jewelry for good luck, or a ball player doing the same, attributing significance to objects otherwise of no significance. Creating a relationship and giving value to an object that has no relationship and no value to the goal at hand. This is a way of thinking that is common for people. A perfume present during a notable experience will be remembered and noticed when smelled again. A person from the past will create feelings that have no relationship to the person at hand.
How much more powerful will be a thought contemplated at an early, vulnerable age? A thought in the future that is comparable to this thought will stir great emotions, for it will be treated as similar or the same as the original. The coach who keeps the good luck charm is thinking similar to the traumatized, associating two unrelated things, one victory, and the other an inanimate object. So when I stated that “…My love for her seems to have become inflamed,” I was associating two unrelated things, the trauma from the hospital and the interest in a girlfriend. I was thinking like an athlete associating victory with a sock, ring, and any number of mostly unrelated things.

This thought process acted in me reflexively, not consciously. So as I thought like a coach or athlete, I sunk deeper and deeper into trouble as more and more powerful thoughts and feelings were related to those of the present moment. I sunk deeper and deeper into the quicksand of the past.

The traumatic thoughts from the past acted like a prayer because they were dwelled upon, meditated upon, over and over, like the throbbing of an aching wound. Consequently, this begs the question, “What kind of person would think such a thought? And repeatedly, for that matter!” Well, it’s logical to conclude that a person of less virtue would, since of course, the thoughts are undesirable, if not immoral, socially unacceptable. So here I am again, and here are the traumatized, thinking like a child and believing some thoughts are good and some are bad, which causes gilt by association.

And so I hope you can see the difficult hurdles before me as I launched my attack against the torment. It was these things and much more that I had to visualize, conceptualize, and conquer! Clinging to an object or a thought is habitual. I had to understand the process that got me to the habitual thinking and lash out at the powerful emotional trauma, changing the dangerous thought patterns infesting me.