Always new adventures in learning

Often after the boyhood constancy of needing to explore my environment has worn off through a thorough exploration of everything I could focus my attention on as growing up, the focus began to turn to spirituality. First, religion inculcated my thinking, and was bound by the parameters set my the christian set of beliefs that were a requirement for belonging to the group. Second, I was the son of a clergyman who was steeped in the religion, and a visible figure in the community to which I belonged. Third, I was immersed into a church school structure. So the exploration was thorough to the surroundings I was born and raised in.

Moving often probably was the best thing to gradually show me life on a wider stage of the religious base to which my parents wanted to have me follow. I did follow this programme right into my adult life, but then began the questions, the searchings, and the determination to leave no stone unturned to finding out what was truth, whether it plunged me into epistemology, semantics, or whatever challenges faced with the male mind. With the help of some upper echelon political theological debacles when I turned 30, the walls began to crumble, and soon, I was taking down the foundation I stood on all of my life. My life was thrown into upheaval, as I struggled to find footing again, and meaning to life, of which Windstill will write more fully on, but on this level of warrior, no search was spared. Near the end of this decade of wandering in the wilderness of life, my soulmate arrived, though neither of us thought this to be so at the time. She helped me get on even footing again, and prevented me throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Another mate of mine, Robert Burgess of Williams Lake, BC fame, also aided me by putting me initially onto Carlos Casteneda, and the Nag Hammadi Library, which we both devoured from one end to the other. I then discovered, Paramahansa Yogananda, whom Susan recommended I try. I looked at his system and thinking, and the exercises, even going to a few gatherings. Susan ran a weekly breakfast that brought the latest of new age thought to her city of Calgary, and did this for years, so often if in town, would visit, but not every week. Religious zeal had long gone for anything, and I was now careful not to do anything that became a habit. One bitten twice shy. I went to Taoist temples, and listened to their ideas. Some of my clients were Mormons, and Jehovahs Witnesses, so saw the fringe thinkers of christian traditions, and sang in a Lutheran choir in Toronto, Canada. In the previous years, I had been the head organist to the largest Seventh Day Adventist Church in Canada, and had played all over Australia and New Zealand. Sometimes just an accompanist to my superstar dad, who had been a world class opera singer, sometimes standing on my own laurels due to people just loving the emotional playing for the guy to whom I was named after, Beniomino Gigli, a famous Italian operatic tenor.

Gradually exercises were introduced, along with body work, as alternative medicine was high on my list of interests, as was massage, and as growing with it, developing energy work. Shamanism was looked into, doing Michael Horners courses. Community drumming, the five tibetan exercises, and delving into sweat lodges with the local indigenous people, were always high in the realm of experience. They all were approached respectfully, and to the fullest of my attention and abilities. Anything that was brought before me to examine, I did faithfully. I discovered Joseph Campbell's works, along with Florinda Donner, and many books along similar lines of thought. The thinking outside of the box, was so far away from where I had been, that it became impossible for me to return to my previously held positions, just like Carlos Casteneda's book, Journey to Ixtlan suggested. No going back. No turning around, and no fear!

ANACONDA

Warrior

The adventure was always there to be had, it merely had to beckon for me to follow, and the addiction of going for it began. Always an adventure lurking in the wings, with its accompanying emotional roller coaster. That part of me that escaped from the reflective stopping still part that always was biting at my heels, to feed the action mode my male energy craved. The competition in the mind to fit another adventure into a small space of time.

The problem was never being able to come back to the same spot, so that before too long, the realization came to mind of Carlos Castenda's book, "The Journey to Ixlan" where the journey is one way, and where one simply cant go back. Oh dear! What to do with the dilemma created by the self, and all the ramifications of different feelings around the whole thing. Easy for the male mind to bite the bullet, and just do it anyway, but what about the sensitive female within, not that she is very big in my very male life(?) How can I give enough rope that society allows me as a heterosexual, to allow showing some feminine qualities in a man's body but needing to draw the line somewhere(?) I am conscious of the warring factions within, the cultural norms, and the environments I had to grow up in. Through my male nursing years, and my music years, I rubbed shoulders with the homosexual community and even allowed myself to be friends to a few, but later in my life as I went into sub-contract work in the social services part of government, I no longer wanted to be seen as a target for their talk, or open to their advances, so sometimes found that being with such people and being the odd man out, was always challenging. I made it perfectly plain though, where I drew the line, and that I was NOT one of them, even though I accepted their way of life and choices.

Adventures as a kid was pretty much completely male based, as only had a couple of brothers to relate to, and having a chinese mum never taught me much about the female sex and another language all together, till much later in my life. My being the son to a Superstar dad who was always in demand, and having us live out of suitcases at times, never getting time to get out of the boxes, led to early anger for being dragged from here to there, of which I talk about through that persona that has always had to deal with this. This side of myself, always was out in the new places looking for new paths to explore, and finding out about my next new adventure. These writings will focus on that warrior part of myself, that I came to be called Anaconda the first time I lived with aborigines, because of how I took the passion of life; embraced it fully, and took the plunge into my adventures, no matter the outcome. Lessons to be learned on all fronts, so why not this one?

Anaconda