Man seeking Spirit

I have looked through this site casually. It has been very interesting, brought back some great memories, but like most of the internet ... has a large subculture that defines the boundaries by Sex, Drugs and Rock N Roll

Although I grew up with all three of these things, and am about to turn 50, I think the most important thing I am looking for is my lost spirit. The Spirit that has been almost left me through years of a corporate career, raising a family and becoming an adult.

I am not a rebel, survivalist, or any kind of crazy. But what I am looking to do is build an Internet community of people that have been around long enough to have seen the world, but are also seeking their lost Spirit.

In 1979, I took off ragged jeans, flushed my dope, pledged my life to one woman, and got on the escaltor. And what is amazing is that the MAJORITY of people I know that did the same things are now Bush-ite Republicans that seem to have lost their spirit forever. I don't want this to happen to me.

 

I have a history very much like your own. I have recently decided to go back to my roots. What I mean by that is being a hippie again and going back to being a liberal which I feel very comfortable doing. It will feel good to have "causes" again. There are some things which I will no longer do such as doing drugs but the rest of it I feel very good about.

 

I too have been on a more spiritual path in the last 10 years or so.
My kids grew up and things did not feel right in the city.

I traveled back to the most wonderful place I ever was on this planet and it set me on the journey of finding my first and only love.
We reunited after 27 years and moved back to the woods...got rid of all debt...meditate..grow our food..don't have much to do with society as a whole.
Removed as much BS from our lives as we could.

Nature is a big thing with us, seems the closer I am to nature the better my psyche,my health, my over all mood.

I can't say I'm a liberal or republican or green party or any of that stuff as there are good ideas and totally screwy idea's and ideals involved with all political parties.

I take what I agree with and go with that.
I know that when I am helping people or nature I am doing a good thing.
When I embrace anything that makes my heart and soul sing....thats what its all about.
From feeding the birds to teaching a child...spread some smiles.

 

It is nice to know that there are people out there that feel the same. Things change. But for me, I have not changed deep down. Over the years, I have just built layers on top of my true feelings and beliefs. I have been wildly successful as a corporate executive, but the truth is that I don't feel connected with the guys at work or the people at our church. I STILL feel connected with eco-friendly, liberal, loving, non-competitive, genuine people. The problem is I don't know any, and am pretty lonely. Again, not lonely in the sense of not having friends, but in the sense of not having spiritual friends.

My New Years resolution is to find or reconnect with those people and feelings. But I don't know where to start. Enviously, I do see alot of people on the site talking about free sex and drugs. Great, but in my opinion those were simply tools of a spiritual world. Get wasted and take your mind to a new place. Cool, but I have enough dead brain cells. Sex, another story ...

I have looked at all the communes. Cool, but simply too confining. Thoughts?

 

Teepi,

You got it right on, man. But I am sure that you did not make the leep without some real hardship and conflict. How did you get through it? I would love to know more about your story and where you started and how you moved back.

 

It is good that you recognise this need in your soul. There is alot of hope for you. I have seen people get swallowed alive by the world and it has caused alot of hardship... I was never there myself, I never left my roots for a second, but I tend to keep my eyes open to the world and what happens in it. I see alot of mental, emotional, and spiritual sickness, and I think one of the worst sick-makers is the 9 to 5 money/power/consumer oriented world. So, congratulations on still being in touch with your soul after all this time.

Food. Everyone eats. Try plugging into a food co-op.
Check out a local anti-war or concerned citizens groups.
Any meditation groups in your area?
How about cool original music oriented clubs?
There are alot of ways to stumble upon some new friends.
If you're adventurous, try scheduling your yearly vacation around a National Rainbow Gathering. You'll never run out of "hippys" to converse with.

 

Great suggestions Earthmother.

I think getting involved in some helpful activities may get you in touch with like minded people.
Habitat for Humanity,or a Unitarian Church efforts in the community.
Or maybe a college in your area has classes in something you are interested in.
A food co-op as Earthmother said is fantastic, I worked in one for years to get extra off my food and met some wonderful people (even dated one of them for awhile).
There are a few magazines I read for info on sustainable living...Backwoods Home, Back Home and Countryside Journal.
They have classifieds and penpal listings for people looking for others interested in certain areas.

You asked about my story...
When I was 12 I ran away from a foster home and ended up in Norton VT at Earth Peoples Park...600 acres of free land for free people.
The hog farm and Wavy Gravy had a huge hand in buying the acerage and deeding the land back to itself..therefore no one owned it.
However the Tax Monster being the entity that it is..the taxes had to be paid every year and there was a concert given to raise money. I was in NYC and caught a ride up there wit h a hog farmer.
While there I met a man for a brief moment...and while he was 25 and I a tender 12..and he was with a woman...I had a vision when I saw him.
I knew he was supposed to be with me...just as I knew the sky was blue.

I only briefly talked with him and soon I left.
I traveled across country, and could not get him off my mind.
I left CA the next spring to go back and satisfy the unsettleness that was so deep in me.
When I got back up there...there he was...he had taken his woman back to OHIO and dropped her off for good and went back to the park..he was there waiting for me..although he did not know it yet.

I went to him and told him I was supposed to be there, that I had never felt so right, that all my little life had led me there.

We were together for 5 months. The hard winter was on the horizon and I was not prepared, Larry was going back to Ohio, and although he had never once asked me how old I was (I was now 14) I knew that for him to bring me to his homestate could prove horrible for him.

I went back to VA. and he to Ohio, we wrote back and forth but I was sent to a hospital, more foster homes and a boarding school..he traveled out west and as distance does..it found us losing touch.
I never forgot him, I never forgot my beloved EPP...
I had men frinds, I lived with someone for 15 years and someone else for 7 years, I had 2 children...but through it all, I knew if he ever pulled up...I'd go in a heartbeat.

I always said if I got the chance I would go back to Vermont and see what I could find..
And one day I finally got the chance, my girlfriend and I went on a camping vacation, and traveled and camped all along the East coast and went back up to Norton VT. it was a Birthday trip for me and there I was right on my Birthday...standing in the middle of Earth Peoples Park..it had been siezed by the federal Goverment.
All the houses had been burned down and it had been renamed Black Turn State forrest...everyone was gone. It was pouring down rain and my personal rain of tears fell like a deluge down my cheeks. I sat where the house I helped Larry build had been a nd balled like a baby...I thought all hope was gone...I thought all those dreams I had held where ripped from me...that hope had been dissolved...a horrible trick had been played..for 27 years I had vowed to come back...back to the most wonderous place..the one place that held my heart and where I felt like I was a part of something was gone.
And then...the rain stopped.
I lay on the ground soaked to the bone..my face swollen like an overipe melon...and the sun hit me right between the eyes.Patty pointed to the most gorgeous rainbow I have ever seen.
I totally felt like I was tripping, like I was watching all of this perched on a branch outside myself.
Everything was in slow mode and was electric atthe same time.

we made our way back to the truck and stopped at the store in town,I asked the teenagers there if they had ever heard of the Park and one said there was a man down the road who used to live there..I went to his place and I did not know him but he knew a man I did know and sent me to his place.
When I got there he barely remembered me....but I did remember him and his anme was Bobby.
He said he knew Bill who still lived in Vermont and was in contact with Larry and Bill would be coming up for the Bread and Puppet theatre ...so I gave him my nuber on a piece of paper that I kissed and I left.
This was on my Birthday June 24th.....

"All at once I hear your voice and time just slips away..."

Well, 9 months to the day..on March 24th I was folding laundry and the phone rang and my son yelled "mom, its for you"
"Hello"
"Diane?"
(gosh this voice sounds familiar)
"yes, this is Diane"
"you'll never guess who this is....it's Larry"

JELLY LEGS!!!
I almost fainted, the room started spinning....I had to immediately sit down.
I cried for 4 days...I would just be in the store or cooking dinner and all of a sudden tears would start streaming down my face....

Wow this is sooo long...I'm sorry but I just love this story so much..and I actually have a point...hahha

But I will finish later......
gotta go have a drink and kiss my Larry.

till next time,
teepi

 

SDaddy - I believe it's possible to find and keep your spirit. Like you, I have traveled what some might call a "traditional" path. But inside - I am still me and I work at keeping the "freak" in me alive. I have homeschooled my kids, rehabbed injured wildlife, donated to various causes, etc..

I think, we are all where we were meant to be. Maybe you were put in the corporate world for a reason - look around and see what you can do. Use your knowledge and position to make change for the good.

Good Luck!

 

maybe its just time you through off teh yoke and stop comprimising what your heart tells you to do. you gotta do this with everything that comes up. just a wild stab at it.

 

i more or less got out of the rat race back in 89 .........the promised pension of a good government job didn t mean a thing to me if i had to live a live of misery .......i had enough confidence in myself to know that i would always be able to earn a living but on my terms ..not by what someone dictated that i should be ........been quite a while since then but have no regrets and have never enjoyed life so fully as since then ......when i retire i may not have the big pension but at least i will have the satisfation of knowing i lived life to the fullest

 

Yep I agree with all that has been said...the point of my story above is that ..
The one thing that really was the SPECIAL thing in my life was the freedom I felt at the park and being with a true love.

So I kept that dream alive for all those years and when it seemed elusive to me...and it did at times as each year would pass by...I never did let it die.

I persued my dream...and while I am not at the Park...I have my own little shangri la going here.
I am with Larry and we live as much as we can as we did all those years ago.

Reach down inside yourself and find what is the most heartfelt important thing for you to do...the most free way for you to live and then do it..as best you can with what you have.

Live each day...do everything and anything each day to live your dream or at least get one step closer to it.

I would like to hear what your dream is SDaddy....if you could do anything you wanted..what would it be???
If you could be anywhere physically..where would it be??
If you could pitch in and give the best of yourself to someone else...what would you give???

teepi

 

teepi, I like your story. It reminds me of my own. Me and my man were really close when we were teenagers, and I proposed to him at 15. Our lives just went in different directions. He hit the road with his band and I went to WV to live on a farm with a bunch of hippys. I lost track of him for 30 years. I found myself all those years later in a situation where I was in a band, needed a guitar player. I was desperate, and just by chance, stumbled across a graduation picture of what could ONLY be his daughter in the hometown newspaper from where I grew up. So I knew he couldn't be too far away. I got hold of his address online, and sent him an invitation to our annual Jamfest. Suddenly, he was on the computer, then on the phone, and here! He never stopped carrying the torch, and when he knew where I was, he dropped EVERYTHING including a 20 year marriage, and came here and he's been here ever since. We got married at last, the whole ball of wax. The very thing that separated us brought us back together!

If ya spend your life living counter to your true inside self, things have a way of not working well, and you'll never be 100% happy. Happiness is elusive and life is short, so... Do what you feel in your heart. No regrets. Regrets SUCK and they're something that doesn't ever completely go away!

 

WOW Patsy...we are sisters hahaha

That is so wonderful.
Sometimes you just KNOW.

Larry too had lived with a woman for 20 years (they never married or had any kids though)
And after we talked that first time he went out and got a web tv so we could talk on there.
He called me in March and of course I KNEW it was to be.
I came up that October on HIS birthday hahhaa.

After we started making plans for me to come up he went out and rented us an apt. And left her.
They were not happy, she had no interest in living in the woods or any of that stuff...just liked her city life.

We got married 3 years ago and its just been such a blessing to both of us.
He had told me all those years ago..."if we are meant to be together, we will be"
We have had so many miracles in our lives, and we laugh so much.

I am happy with my life, it is hard at times but I do count my blessings and there are blessings everyday.

 

Well guys, took a job for the next three years. So back to the rat race. Oh well, maybe I will revisit this at the next crossroad. Peace out.

 

We've all been through the cycles, adapted to the times. Of course you want to find that lost spirit -- it's being flushed into the abyss even as we speak. The only way out is the way of the spirit. Though it got an unfair rap after materialism took over our lives, the Aquarian Age ideals are still around, and our chances for realizing these ideals are as great as they've ever been. All it takes is a little unity....and a hell of a lot of Love.....

 

Dear teepi,

This is the second time that I've heard your story, and the second time that I've come away choked with emotion at the beauty and indefinable spirit of our lives.

 

Oh sweetie,

Its been 36 years now since that day and I am still in amazement over it all. It still brings a tear to my eye and a smile to my lips.

Thank you for feeling it.

teepi

 

What a strage occurence. I too have the same type history with my beloved, tho I will not tell the tale. But I will say that when it's true love it lasts a life time and one never forgets the sheer delight in having, love, trust, honesty, never feeling lonely inside and knowing that it is possible to have and not an Illusion or just a fairy tale. It's rare and should be charished and nurtured. Feelings are not easily discribed, but when that ONE walks into your life, you know it.. whew.. man do ya know it.. YeHaww!!
The hardships were worth whatever, to pay the price of what I have been blessed with in this time of my life. As we grow into ourselve we get comfortable and relaxed. We trust eachother and trust ourselves. It wouldn't matter if we were in a dirt hole, as long as we were in it together we could dig our way out.
Each day is a struggle, but each night we lay down together and rise to carry on through the next obstical that the day brings.. there's always something going on.. But you get through it and come together and your eyes meet and you melt into eachothers soul and become one and you know that life is worth living for this moment alone.(tingle). I had better stop here before I have to go molest my hubby.. on second thought.. BBL ..

 

Wow-OK-I think it may be time for me to find a soalmate-Been single too long now; and these love stories are rippin my heart out!-which is alright-I need a wake up call for love anymore-With all the garbage coming out of Washington and the world; a lotta more love is just what the Dr. ordered for this world of ours-when your making love ' there's no time for fighting-and it sure feels a whole lot better-good luck with your relationships ladies-keep the love light on-

 

Oh-ma-gawd, that reminded me of a crazy dream I had one time.

There was a war goin' on, don't know what country, and I was a member of some group that was tryin' to get it stopped. We were in the middle of an experiment, and it appeared to be working. We had large airplanes land in the battle zone, full of beautiful NAKED women. As they started to pour out of the planes, the fighting just STOPPED. Guess the soldiers were too shocked to continue. Think it would work? Where does my mind come up with this stuff!!!