The Road of Excess

I was raised Catholic. The toxic pathology about sex taught by the church in the 1950s drove me to the brink of suicide, but at age 14 I was given the type of experience that the Gnostics called an Awakening. I hope to explain its importance to those who can hear. It saved my life and set me on a path of pursuing truth wherever it might lead. I am still on that path, because it never ends. At age 23 I was given another such experience, which showed that my mind is not what I thought. I have been exploring its implications ever since as well. At age 27 I helped found the New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn as one Tradition of the Craft, which is a new religion now meeting the needs of at least a million people. I am glad I was able to do that. My MA in Poetry got me hired as an editor for Scientific American Books; then I earned a Ph. D. in Berkeley in order to become a better writer. And just before I turned 36, I got myself to Alcoholics Anonymous and began working toward another sort of spiritual awakening. That path also never ends, because it is the same path. Of the autobiographies I've read, I liked Bertrand Russell's the most-until I realized his story was fundamentally dishonest. Given his outspoken beliefs, one would expect him to have had an exuberant sex life-and so he did, but not a hint of that appears in his life story. I cannot leave my sexuality out of my own story, because, given my childhood, developing an adequate theory of sexuality has been one of my goals for sixty years. At one time, before I was thinking clearly about how to write this story, I thought perhaps I should gloss over the events of September 11, 1976, but it dawned on me, no, that was where the story has to begin; so I wrote "Turning Point." Here it is Chapter 1.