HEADING FOR THE HEART - Part 8

During the summer of my illness, I had profound spiritual experiences. I had a pastor I'd never previously met tell me that I had been called for a great purpose. He told me that I had a tall, steep mountain to climb. Was he ever right!

In his presence, I once again fell backwards to the floor as, this time, I had a physical experience of Jesus' suffering upon the cross. Afterward I felt an incredible sense of peace. As that summer wore on, I experienced empathy for the alienation that Jesus felt during his final week of earthly light. This occurred during a time when people I had counted upon shunned me and judged me as insane. Indeed I took on their judgments and, once again, experienced insanity as another mania followed.

As before it was filled by spiritual experience, though this time much of that occurred before the mania. The other significant difference was that I remained purely sexually sober this time. That had been the opposite case during my previous experience those many years before. All of this experience will be included in another article about living with and recovering from mental illness. In the meantime my next article will be in a lighter vein.

During this mania, I experienced the same delusion as before. Perhaps there had been some foreshadowing. I had a complete stranger approach me one day and ask me if I was going to walk upon water. I smiled at him and told him, “Not today.”

Author Davis Aujourd'Hui

An incredible synchronicity developed within my life. I would only have to think of a person and that person would immediately call me on the phone or appear in my life at some later point on the same day. Songs on the radio spoke exactly to whatever challenge with which I was dealing. On two of my difficult days, I would walk outside into the rain only to find that the rain was falling around me. I would be bathed in a circle of light and I would remain dry.


I spent hours in daily prayer and meditation. Many of the things for which I prayed immediately came to pass. Spiritual insights would come to me as epiphanies. They were “Ah hah” moments in which it seemed as if a light bulb was going on within my brain. More importantly my soul was beginning to understand many of the mysteries of the spiritual realm.

Many of these spiritual truths will be contained within the lessons in Advanced Holiness within my future Sister Mary Olga Fortitude books. I may even write a non fiction book about them. I couldn't do justice to them within the context of an article. They are not mysteries that are unique to me. What I have discovered as I have continued my spiritual discovery is that I have subsequently come upon spiritual books in which my own previous revelations have been contained. Talk about spiritual validation!

All the while, my sexual recovery remained stable during continuing trials within my life. Life was not getting much easier for me, but I was being given strength from God to endure things of which I would never have thought it possible for me to cope with. My life continued to become an amazing adventure. Thankfully my mania came to a peaceful close. Yet my spiritual life continued to unfold.

HEADING FOR THE HEART-- Part 7

Here I was, back in recovery and just in the nick of time. Major life-changing events would begin unfolding over the course of the next one and a half years that could have shaken me to the core without support system. More importantly I had found my way back to a place of faith.

I realized that God was working a miracle within my life when he removed sexual obsession and desire from within me. More and more, I shifted my focus outward when it came to dealing with my own problems. By being of service to others and helping them with their problems, it helped me get past my own. It also awakened me more and more to my spirit and to a sense that there was a reason for everything that happened within my life and the lives of others.

As I have told you in my previous article, my recovery was not perfect. Slips happened, but they were few and far between. In the meantime, my partner was becoming more aware of the significance of my addiction and that it was not about him. Consequently he became more supportive which enhanced my sense of well-being. That was also a consequence of me becoming more honest and aligned with the values of my spirit.

I faced the deaths of my two dogs and the death of my best friend and I remained essentially sexually sober. I grieved during the final stages of my friend's illness, but I was at peace upon his passing. I was also with him when he took his last breath. I did not need to cry. I had faith that he was in a better place. It felt so spiritual to see him look me in the eyes with a sense of acceptance just prior to him taking those final breaths.

In the course of the next year, I faced my own life-threatening diagnosis, the end of a twenty-four year relationship, moving into a new home, suddenly being unable to work and coming close to death. This all happened just after starting a new relationship with a younger man.

Even so, I felt a tremendous sense of peace. Despite a lifetime of incredible emotional pain, I felt as if my life was complete. It's not that I had a death wish. I had a desire to do so much that would be of help to others. That desire was what ultimately saved me as I regained my strength and help with a lot of support from caring people. It's just that most of those who cared for me were not the friends who I would have thought to have been there.

In the case of two of the persons who helped me find healing, I hadn't even known them at the point I'd received my diagnosis. God placed people in my life at exactly the right moment in time. I can now see that He indeed had an ongoing purpose for my life. That would be for me to discover. Discover it, I did!

Author Davis Aujourd'hui

"Putting the Pieces Together" by Davis Aujourd'hui
Available in Kindle Format for .99 cents and can be purchased here !

(Putting the Pieces Together is an anthology of a gay man's journey toward self-acceptance. It is a poignant and intimate book chronicling recovery from mental illness, sexual addiction, and alcohol.)

HEADING FOR THE HEART -Part 6

Having endured debilitating depressions for over twelve years, they were now much milder in comparison once I began on the road to recovery. I would eventually realize that I needed psychiatric help once I had stopped medicating myself with booze and sex. An amazingly unimaginable and unmanageable experience with mania finally convinced me that I needed medical help.


During that mania, I had some of the most incredible experiences with synchronicity. People I would think of would appear in my life. Complete strangers would be drawn to me and say things like “We've been waiting for you. How glad we are that you are finally here!”


There was also fear and paranoia. Once again my partner left me for he feared for his own safety. My moods could become volatile and filled with rage when I was not floating on my pink cloud. Life became incredibly unmanageable. Even so, there were so many moments of sublime peace. It was as if I was alternating between an experience of heaven and hell. Most of it was good. Most of it seemed like a reality so much more real than “the normal” experience of being human. I truly realized that I was a spiritual being having a human experience.


I was finally diagnosed with a bipolar disorder and put on life-saving, sanity-saving medication that following year - I shall write about my experiences with recovery from alcoholism and mental illness in future articles. The pitfall following my mania was that I left my recovery programs in the midst of delusional paranoia.


I did not return to them because I was mortified to face people who had seen me when I had been madder than a hornet or acting holier than Thou. Isolating myself from my support system only served to punish myself. Fortunately, I did not pick up a drink again, but I went back into my sexual addiction with a vengeance.


For the next twelve years I was back in the trenches of sexual addiction. During that time, my soul withered as I began to lead a life filled with lies and deception – to myself and others. I became emotionally stunted since I was once again medicating myself with the most potent drug I had ever experienced; that was the chemistry which occurred within my brain whenever I was under the influence of the hunt for sex and the oblivion of acting out my unending desires.


You can read my story about my sexual addiction and subsequent recovery in my article entitled My Secret Shame. Fortunately I made it back to SAA unlike so many others who don't return or never make it there in the first place. Sexual addiction is rampant in our society, especially among gay men.


I was blessed. I took my recovery seriously this time. I realized that, while I didn't come back into the program in a state of despair, I had become apathetic and spiritually bankrupt. Recovery opened my eyes to my spirit in a manner that would only continue to help me climb the mountain and claim a grace that I had forgotten was always available. It was up to me to grab for it.


As I did so, amazing things began to happen. Like anything connected to spirit, there are spiritual laws operating in the universe. You do not have to believe in God. All one needs to do is to embrace the idea that there is a power in the universe that is greater than oneself. Embracing faith in God was not a difficult step for me.


What would become a challenge would be to once again embrace my relationship with Jesus. The reason for this may amaze you. You see, while I had been manic, I had was under the delusion that I was the reincarnation of Jesus; or rather that he was the reincarnation of me. After all, time as we perceive it in a linear fashion is said to be an illusion. That is something I believe to be true. It was a comfort to me that other people I have known have shared similar religious delusional experiences. In some of their experiences they also believed that they were the reincarnation of Jesus. Just like always, I was not alone.

Author Davis Aujourd'hui

"Putting the Pieces Together" by Davis Aujourd'hui
Available in Kindle Format for .99 cents and can be purchased here !

(Putting the Pieces Together is an anthology of a gay man's journey toward self-acceptance. It is a poignant and intimate book chronicling recovery from mental illness, sexual addiction, and alcohol.)

HEADING FOR THE HEART - - Part 3

I wrongly labeled myself as an agnostic after the time I had come out as a gay man at the age of twenty-three. I did believe in God. I just did not believe some of the teachings of man. I lost interest in the Bible because I chose to judge it based on those parts of the Bible that seemed to judge gay people without love. I began my new spiritual quest on a more personal basis. I came to believe that to be spiritual had nothing to do per se with religion.

My beliefs began to dramatically change after I had an out-of-body experience that included a very real dialog with God. It happened suddenly after what seemingly should have been a very serious, if not fatal, car accident.

I was driving about forty-five miles per hour along a curving road at a point where another road intersected at the curve. I noticed a large truck stopped at the stop sign on the intersecting road, but I paid little attention to it as I was rounding the curve. Suddenly a car pulled around the right side of the truck and into the intersection at the very time I was bearing down on it. I had no time to react.

The occupants of the other car were an elderly couple. In a split-second, I saw the female passenger raise her hands over her head and I could see her look of abject terror as I was about to crash into them head-on. Instead my car seemed to pass right through them and I was left in what I can only describe as a trance state.

For the next several hours I was actually having a conversation with God. It was all a form of telepathy, but I was aware of forming metaphysical questions from a subconscious state and I was getting very definite answers. The experience was so profound that it's difficult to put into words.

In the course of the afternoon I found myself in a variety of locations, including the church in which I had been baptized and the local Roman Catholic cathedral. Finally I found myself at the grave site of my beloved maternal grandmother whose death during my early childhood I had never gotten over. While at each of these spots, the conversation continued. I felt such a sense of peace within me. Yet I didn't really feel as if I was in my body. It was as if my spirit was accompanying my body as I traveled, but was separate from it. I also found myself in contact with the spirit of my recently deceased paternal grandmother. She gave me assurance that she was in a better place and that I should not grieve for her.

While I was at the Cathedral I saw my body walking past the stations of the cross and I felt as if I was in direct communion with Jesus, himself. The experience was awesome, but not overwhelming. It provided me with a tremendous sense of relief as well as a peace I had never known. The one new wrinkle in my spirituality was that I started believing in reincarnation immediately thereafter.

Author Davis Aujourd'hui

HEADING FOR THE HEART - - Part 2

I was told that I screamed bloody murder when the minister of the Congregational Church held me up to the congregation once I had been baptized. I would later feel like screaming when I heard the stories of Jesus' crucifixion and the deaths of the early Christian martyrs. How could humans be so cruel and heartless?

I didn't understand the passages in the Old Testament of the Bible that talked about a vengeful God. That didn't seem to be like The Father to whom Jesus referred. Yet, later in life, that was the kind of God that was portrayed by some who professed to be Christian; these same Christians who would persecute me because I was gay.

So much of what I learned through religion seemed to contradict the messages of love and forgiveness that Jesus brought to us. I felt both shame along with anger and indignation. That eventually led me to leave the church. That would not happen until I was in my early twenties.

As a child, I regularly attended church and Sunday school where I soaked up the affirmation that Jesus loved me. By the time I became a teen, I looked forward to joining my church and participating in communion. The church that I attended by then was a Presbyterian Church. As much as I found comfort in my faith, the practices and sermons I heard in that church did not stir my spirit. I had no concept that what I wanted was a more expressive as well as a more personal form of spirituality that would eventually include mysticism - a personal experience of the Holy Spirit working within me.

I became active in the Youth Fellowship where I served as president. I sang in the youth choir and I wrote prayers and sermons which I delivered on Youth Sunday and at youth retreats. Little did I realize that what came through me when I wrote was my own innate spiritual understanding. I was a tiny flower whose petals had only started to glimpse the sunlight.

It would take me many years before I realized that I was indeed blossoming. In the interim, there would be much hardship and a feeling that God had forsaken me in between those times. Yet, even as I would walk in paths of darkness that led me to utter despair, I never lost hope or I wouldn't be here today.

I can now see how everything in my life and in the totality of life happens for a reason. Although much of it makes no sense, that's just the mystery of this life which has nothing to do with the heaven which I have come to learn resides within myself. I came to believe that the only true hell is that which we create within ourselves stemming from when we judge ourselves or others in unloving ways. We are all children of God and therefore we are unconditionally loved. All is forgiven because God only wants what is best for His children; so I believe!

Author Davis Aujourd'hui

HEADING FOR THE HEART--Part 1

We are all born as innocents – pure unadulterated love and joy. What happens to us as we are exposed to life in this world only serves to start our journeys back to the heart. By this, I mean that we become products of our environment. We may grow up in dysfunctional families. We may become victimized. We may find ourselves seeking to earn love instead of simply feeling we are worthy of love. We may find that we become attached to various labels such as our sex, our family identity, our social status, our race, our religion, our careers, and so on.

By the time we reach adulthood, we may not know who or what we truly are; that would simply be spirit in human form. Such was the case in my own life. After a lifetime of trying to fill myself up with people, places, and things in order to feel better, I have realized that I am the only one who can do that for myself. I have come to see that I have been on a journey back to the place from which I started. I'm on a journey back to that place of innocence. I'm on a journey where I am headed back to the heart of true love. I am and always have been a spiritual being having a human experience.

My journey has not been an easy one. While I grew up in a family who I believe loved me the best that they could, I never really felt as if I was loved for who I was. I somehow got the idea that I needed to earn love by being a “good boy.”

Neither of my parents seemed to know how to deal with feelings appropriately while I was growing up. Consequently many of my emotional needs were neglected. I can vividly remember being told that I shouldn't feel certain ways. There were a lot of confusing messages. Consequently I learned to play games with myself in order to escape uncomfortable feelings. I didn't know how to handle them.

I knew that I couldn't live up to the standard of the perennial good boy. I played prosecutor and judge in dealing out a verdict of guilty as charged. The judgment that I placed upon myself was to become a sword that would cut deeply. I didn't recognize that I was inherently good. Instead I set myself up by thinking that I needed to be perfect when that's virtually impossible for a human to be. After all, we all make mistakes. The problem was that when I failed at something, I took on the message that I was a failure. I did that to myself.

Such was my emotional life which is mirrored in the lives of most of us to greater and lesser degrees. Yet I had a part of me that experienced freedom whenever I didn't allow myself to be consumed by negative thoughts or feelings. That part of myself was my spirit. I was in touch with that when my mother read me Psalms from the Bible and told me the stories of Jesus. I loved to look at the sunlight coming through the Gentle Shepherd window at church. He looked so real and so kind. The radiance of his soul shone through. I always had a special place for him in my heart.

As a little boy, I was in touch with my spirit when my father would take me outside where I would gaze into the night sky. There he would point out the Big Dipper and the constellations while I gazed in wonder into the vastness of space. I was in awe when I saw a beautiful sunset. I was filled with a sense of freedom when I glided down a ski slope. I felt as if I was flying. Such were the times when I forgot about my problems and was at peace within my soul.

Author Davis Aujourd'hui

REACHING FOR RECOVERY (PUTTING DOWN THE DRINK) Part 1

As is the case with most of us, I came from a dysfunctional family. It's just that my family didn't happen to be a horror story. True, my mother had challenges with mental illness. Her anxiety and depression became a part of my own later life experience. For me, it was probably a case of both nature and nurture. Who truly knows?

The larger problem is that my family didn't know how to appropriately express or deal with feelings. When Mom was in a difficult place within herself, she would act out by crying or getting angry. On the other hand, my dad was very reserved. If he was angry, he would do something like go out to the woodpile and chop wood. The only time I experienced his anger was once in a blue moon when I would receive a spanking. That stopped when I was thirteen and fought him back.

I was often told that I shouldn't feel certain ways. That led me to believe that certain feelings were bad. As time went on, I became more and more disconnected from my feelings. That was certainly not the case after my favorite grandmother died when I was nine. I was grief-stricken. That only led me to medicate through my first addiction – my secret shame.

The problem was that I basically had to deal with my grief alone. Perhaps it was too overwhelming for my mother. My father just didn't seem to know how to handle sadness at all. In fact, I don't remember him ever appearing sad. I also never witnessed him crying until he came to visit me in alcohol rehab when I was then thirty-three.

My childhood story involved trauma, bullying, and internalized homophobia. I also thought that I needed to earn love through my accomplishments. The bottom line was that I was very insecure and I had low self-esteem. My entire childhood experience had become a breeding ground for what would become multiple addictions for me as an adult.

Author Davis Aujourd'hui