Peace

Some have gone to Hell and back to find themselves. I survived the journey and I’m stronger because of it. In this Place and Time I am the best Me I have ever been…

I write in the voice of who I was and not the person I am today. Many of you will feel empathy, sympathy and pain for my words. Try not to. Feel for the victims, their lives and deaths matter.

I am honored to have lived the intense life I have. I have defended those that couldn’t defend themselves. I stood shoulder to shoulder with my Brothers. People have risked their lives for me and I for them. I lived in a violent World where your reputation was everything. Truth mattered.

How many get a chance to live in this World?

My Definition of Peace

Mine is a “Peace of Mind” and not some numb disconnected thing. I did not find this Peace by sitting on a black cushion in some dark room making weird noises. I found it within me. I am a hillbilly Buddha having discovered my own enlightenment. I don’t want to be Tom Cruise or an NBA star. I love being me and being a part of the life I create around me.

I found my Peace in the Deserts and Mountains of Utah and Nevada years ago. Back then I lived wild with only my dogs. I avoided all human contact and rode into the backwater towns for supplies under the cover of darkness. I began to find ways to heal myself.

Everyday I stood in a steep walled canyon screaming “WHY” until I could scream no more and “WHY” didn’t matter.

I wrote everything I could remember that haunted me. The deaths, the bodies, the betrayals. The failures, the near misses, the luck, the survivor guilt. Every night I would burn it all and start over the next morning. I pounded my fists into the red dirt and howled into the night like the wounded Animal I was. I learned how to forget – how to forgive – how to find a place for my Memories. I was troubled by my past and found my own way through it. I learned to look inward to find what caused me to react to the World in the ways that I did.

For me it started with rage. When I had my career I had explosive fits of rage. The rage had a home in me and served me well in the fights but when the career was over I didn’t want to lose control of my mind anymore. I waited and watched. As a new rage would build in me I would do my best to sense every aspect of it. To smell, feel, taste it. To feel it building. Once I was familiar with the beginning of my Rage I waited for it and visualized putting a trash can lid over it. I tried and failed many, many times to stop it.

Then one day I was able to stop my rage. In that moment I was changed forever. For the first time in my life I felt the reins of my mind in my hands. I was in control and things have been better ever since. I have shared this technique with others who have been effected by PTSD and it has been helpful for some of them. I have not experienced an explosive fit of rage since that day. I learned to take control of other parts of my mind that I didn’t like to. Fewer things bothered me.

This is the Peace I speak of. A Peace of knowing oneself. Of being able to look inward and control what causes you pain or pleasure. To not be troubled, to know what makes you tick.

This is the Peace I’ve found

Michael of the Distant Mountains

© 2015, Michael Fulcher. All rights reserved.