The Meaning of Life

Hey everyone, my name is Ed and I’d like to welcome you to my first blog! I’m a student of taijiquan and qigong at the YMAA Retreat center in Northern California. The picture above is me practicing a taiji saber form. I have allot I would like to share with the world. In my future blog post I would like to share my thoughts on sin. The correlations between eastern and western ideologies, and ideas I have for making this world a little better. For this, my first ever blog, I thought it would be a good idea to give you a little background on who I am, and how I began this journey to understand the meaning of life. 
        I was born into a religious family, and was raised to be a minister. I gave my first public bible reading when I was only 5 years old. I really enjoyed reading the bible and I took to public speaking from a very young age. I had only one memory of my father as a child, and was mostly raised by my mother, who was an exceptional mom. I remember when I was ten, my mother was diagnosed with cancer and the doctors thought she wasn’t going to make it. I went in to her hospital room and asked her if she was going to die. She just smiled and told me she couldn’t die, she had four kids to raise. I was so relieved! True to her word my mother had a miraculous recovery, and is cancer free to this day. I do not think I would be the kind of man I am today if my mother hadn’t made it, and I am truly grateful to have had a woman like that to raise me.

Being without a father I had mentors in my religion who would study the bible with me, and even from time to time take me fishing. Once an elder even took me up in his airplane and let me fly. At that point in my life, the meaning of my life was to share the good news the bible had to as many people as I could, in the hopes of converting them to my religion which we called ‘the truth’. This may have been my reality to this day if not for one event that changed everything. After 12 years my dad came back into my life. 

My mom never spoke negatively of my dad and I admire her for that, my grandparents on the other hand spoke of him as if he were the most sinister person on the planet. However when he showed up when I was 14, I forgot everything bad thing I had ever heard of him, and instead embraced him whole heartedly. I was the happiest kid on earth. My dad explained to me that he had looked for me and my brothers and sister for 6 years, chasing lead after lead, before he finally found us. I think some bad history between him and my mom made her want to avoid a reunion, but time heals all wounds and our reunion was drama free. 

So why, you may ask, would me reuniting with my dad change the course of my life? It’s complicated. You see I wasn’t raised in an ordinary religion. I was raised a Jehovah's Witness. There is an understanding in that religion that, if you are baptized as a Jehovah's Witness, and decide later that you do not want to be a Jehovah's Witness you are to be shunned by your family and friends. My father, having been baptized and having been removed from the congregation fit into this category. So when I was 16, as I was studying to be ordained and baptized, one of the elders had a private conversation with me. He told me that my bible knowledge was deep, and my preaching work was good, however he said if I truly wanted to commit myself to god, I would need to stop talking to my father! So you can see how that would flip a teenagers world upside down.

I was so committed to my faith that I actually called my dad and told him I couldn’t talk to him anymore. My brothers and sister had already done this, so I was the last of his children to stop talking to him. He was crushed. He cried. I felt so horrible and couldn’t understand how god would require this of me. This caused me to question my faith for the first time. There was only one truth, either I believed in a god who wanted me to shun my own father, or the religion I was raised in was misguided. It only took a month before I decided to resume communication with my father. I did get baptized as a Jehovah's Witness in the summer of 1996, but I had already begun to doubt that it was gods one true religion.

It may be hard to properly convey the seriousness of these doubts. You see, if I left the Jehovah's Witness religion I would be subject to the same shunning my father received, and it is not one of those religions that you can just be on the fence about. Trust me I tried. When I was 17 I began to go through deep depression as the reality of my life began to set in. I still went preaching but my heart was not in it. I began to do research and it did not take me long before I realized I had dedicated my life to a misguided religion. In February of 1998, I was disfellowshipped and removed from the Jehovah's witness religion. I was consequently shunned by all of my friends I had known since I was a child, my two brothers, my sister and even my own mother. All of whom continue to shun me to this day, 19 years later.

I share this story because I want you to understand what lead me to deeply ask what the meaning of life is. The meaning of my life had always been to bring people to believe what the Jehovah's Witnesses believed. Once this no longer existed my whole house of cards crashed down. I researched many different churches looking for the true religion. I had questions I could not intellectually get passed. I wondered, how could so many different religions consider themselves the one true religion? How could people believe in these religions so fervently that they would die for them? They cannot all be right. I wondered if god was even real or if man had made him up so that they could stop asking deep questions. This was a very low point in my life. I missed my family and my friends. I felt empty and depressed. I was suicidal and only the emptiness after death kept me from following through with suicide. When I was 21, after three years of deep depression I finally decided that instead of taking my own life I would do anything I wanted to do, and to hell with the consequences. I was tired of being a sad weak outcast.

It didn’t take me long to end up on the wrong side of the law, and I spent my entire 20’s in and out of jail and prison. This did not help me to recover from my depression. Instead when I was in jail I picked up another coping mechanism. I began to use drugs. I was not a full time addict. I was not a social drug user. I preferred to go off on my own and escape from reality whenever my depression was to great. When I was released from jail in 2010, I was 30 and had been in and out for 9 years. I began to feel the need to turn my life around. I had developed a deep bond with my father and he constantly pushed me to get over my past. So I got a good job as an oilfield worker, and even though I didn’t respect what oil represented on a global scale, I thought it was much better than a life of drugs and crime.

Me and my dad summer of 2016

My life began to take shape after I began working. I realized I was smart and excelled at my work. I began to have healthy relationships with women. I got on my feet and got my life together. As I began to heal internally from the things of my past, I began to look around at the world I lived in, and I became so empathetic. I began to realize that I lived in a sick world and that although I had helped myself recover from my own prison, I was not doing anything to help the world I was born into. I was very busy with work so for awhile these were just thoughts I put in the back of my head, and then in 2014 oil prices began to fall and I got laid off. 

This is me recording a demo at Soundtrack Records with my band Top Shelph

 
 

Top Shelph performing in Bakersfield, Ca

With free time for the first time in years, I began to reflect on my life. I had an OK life. I had food in my belly and some nice things. A truck, a motorcycle, a cute girlfriend. I even had a pretty popular band, but I felt so empty inside. The extra time gave me a chance to look around at the world I was living in. I saw the state of the world. The war, the starvation, and how as a species, people had become so calloused. I began to ask my friends what the meaning of life was. Some laughed at me. Some asked me why I would ask a question like that. I thought, why wouldn’t you ask that question. I thought there has to be more to life than just to work a job and retire. Even if the majority of the people I knew felt comfortable in their own bubble, I didn’t. So in the spring of 2015, when I had just turned 35, I sold all of my possessions and moved to a remote part of southern Oregon to answer some of the following deep questions. What is the meaning of my life? What is the meaning of all life, and why are we here? Is there a simple truth the permeates in all culture and all religion?

This is me summer of 2015 In my little travel trailer in Oregon. I was so happy!

 

To answer these questions I formed a strategy. I reasoned since there were so many opinions in the world as to what religion or philosophy or ideology was true and untrue, I would approach the world as if I had never heard one thing. I would empty my mind of propaganda and theology. Of socially accepted norms, and just enter the woods of southern Oregon with a blank canvas. What I experienced with this perspective was incredible. I had never connected to nature before, and once immersed in it I realized that I was a part of this planetary eco-system. On top of that, I came to a deep understanding of good and evil. Of sin, and many other topics I hope to share with you in future posts. The peace and love I found in the quiet mountain was incredible, and soon I began to look for a deeper study of what I am. I had purchased a taijiquan book and DVD from Dr. Yang Jwing Ming. Inside the book he said that taijiquan was invented by Chinese mountain men, and the ultimate purpose of taijiquan was to understand the meaning of ones own life. This resonated with me so much, since I was a mountain man who was thinking about the meaning of my own life. I sent him an email and he invited me to visit his mountain retreat center in Northern California.

When I arrived at the retreat center I asked Dr. Yang what the meaning of life was. To the best of my memory this is what he told me, ““The meaning of life is too profound for one man to know in a lifetime. Look at the vastness of the universe. Even if I search my whole life I may only get a third of the way up the mountain and only on one tiny path. If you follow me I can tell you that over there is a lake, and over there a trail, and you may with guidance get two thirds the way up the mountain, but still only on one little path. This is why there are so many religions, because there are so many different perspectives. You should put a question mark behind anything you hear from me or anyone else. You will never know whats on the other side of the mountain, or what is on the other side of the universe. This is why Taoist stopped asking what the meaning of life was and instead began asking, ‘what am I?’ This is what taijiquan can help you discover."
        What an answer! So many unresolved questions from my past began to make sense for the first time and I knew immediately that I had found a person qualified to teach me more about life. I have decided to stay and train here full time with Dr. Yangs disciples. Having the background I have I want to send a message out to anyone I have known in my travels. If I met you in jail or prison. If I talked philosophy with you and shared conspiracy theories. If you were a fan of Top Shelph and miss the music. I just want you to know that i love you, and have not forgotten about you. To post this blog is to reenter the world after two years of solitude. I promise to share my flaws and faults, and to be completely honest with you. 
         In the 6 months since I began training taijiquan I have made some incredible discoveries. I have realized that there is an energy that flows through all living things, and that with a little patience and a concentrated mind, I can cultivate this energy. I have come to realize that my perspective creates my reality. So if I look at the world with a bad outlook I will see the bad, so I choose to look at the beautiful things in the world. I also realize that there is allot of sadness and confusion nowadays, and if i can help create a little more positivity, then I may change the world for the better. As I grow as a person, I will share this experience with the world, and that has become the meaning of my own life.