About Don

Twenty years ago, I read a novel that began with the narrator reading a newspaper ad.

Teacher Seeking Pupil
Must have an earnest desire to
save the world

The novel was Ishmael, An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit, by Daniel Quinn. I read it, and then I read it again. And then I read it again. For me, the message conveyed through the story in the novel was fantastic news. It appeared to me that all that was necessary in order to save the world was for enough people to read Ishmael!

Over the next six or eight months, I gave away probably forty copies of Ishmael. I gave them to all of my friends, and to anyone I met who showed the slightest interest in what I was so excited about.

Then, the results started coming in… “Sorry, Don. I just couldn’t get into it.”

And, “Here is your book back, Don. I tried to read it several times, but the telepathic gorilla just didn’t interest me.”

Of the forty or more people I gave books to, few even read it, and of those who did read it, only a handful understood its message as I did.

I couldn’t believe it. The explanation for how things came to be this way, even if told by a telepathic gorilla, was clear and succinct. The book had won awards, including the $500,000 Turner Tomorrow award, given by Ted Turner for the work of fiction judged to be the most influential in helping to save the planet. Of course, there were thousands of people who understood and appreciated it… Apparently, though, there were not very many from my particular group of friends.

It was a terrible blow… I was forced to admit that saving the world was not going to be as easy as I had naively thought it would be. Upon reflection, I realized that many of my friends were in the oil and gas exploration business as I was… a fact that was certainly a big factor with the lack of success in people “getting it”. Most of my friends, even those who were not in the oil business, were relatively affluent. They were completely invested in our culture, and totally unwilling to question whether or not our culture might be doomed to failure. Most of them had gone to college, graduated, and were in the process of carving out their little piece of the pie. They had worked hard. They had done what they were supposed to do in order to be successful. And now, they were ready to reap their financial rewards, and enjoy the security that came with their success. According to their reaction to Ishmael, they were most certainly NOT willing to consider that our culture was fatally flawed at its most basic level. Apparently, they had invested way too heavily in making this culture work for them, and they were not willing to just give up on it. And especially, they were not willing to help to bring an end to it.

Eventually, I came to realize that another reason many people did not understand Ishmael, was that they were not accustomed to thinking for themselves… at least not about the big questions. For those, they preferred to depend upon the “experts”, being the recognized governmental and religious leaders.

This unwillingness on the part of many of us to think for ourselves about the big questions is a huge problem. The result is that the rich and powerful get to answer those questions on our behalf… Which is really not a good idea. Hopefully, Soft Landing will help many of us begin to fix this terrible situation. Many of those big questions that each of us, as individuals, need to start tackling instead of abdicating are going to be addressed herein. If you are one who, up to this point, has been abdicating instead of thinking, I encourage you to be brave and read on… Your bravery may ultimately provide a big contribution to helping save our world from devastation. At the very least, you will find your own life to have been enriched by the process of beginning to think a little bit more for yourself.

Despite my frustrations with having shared Ishmael with so many people who didn’t appreciate it, I remain extremely grateful for the truths I learned within those pages. In my own case, the result of my finding out the truth about our culture was that it set me free. It turned out that the truths I learned from reading Ishmael were the exact truths I had been searching for my entire life, without even realizing that I was searching for them. I have thanked the powers of the Universe each and every day since first reading Ishmael for allowing me to have this fantastic knowledge. Now I know why I have had a lifelong problem accepting authority. Now I understand what bothered me about religion. Now I can visualize a world free of war, hunger and strife… a world I can proudly pass along to my son and to the generations that follow him. Now I can spend the rest of my life working towards a goal that really matters to me… helping to save our planet from destruction. 

Until recently, my favorite movie of all time has been Dances with Wolves. It is the one movie, out of the hundreds of movies based on themes from the old American West, where the Indians are fairly and accurately portrayed as the competent, rational, moral and caring group. And in stark contrast, the people of our culture are shown to be mostly insane, immoral, and incompetent. The dilemma faced by the Sioux Indian tribe as they wrestle with how to handle the encroachment of the white men onto their lands is very poignant and very well done. This is the real story of the old West, and thanks to Kevin Costner and to Michael Blake, the author of the screenplay, for finally showing it to us as it really was.

Now a new favorite movie has emerged for me. Basically, though, it is the same story as Dances With Wolves told in a different setting… Pandora. This movie, of course, is Avatar. I love it when Neytiri’s mother, Mo’at, tells Jake Sully, “It is hard to fill a cup that is already full.” And a little bit later, “We will see if your insanity can be cured.” Thank you, James Cameron. If the truth wasn’t so dangerous to the people running our insane culture, Avatar certainly would have won the Oscar for best picture in 2009. Hopefully, the 2.7 billion dollars, and counting, you brought in worldwide from moviegoers eased the pain of this loss a little for you.

I was born in Bartlesville, Oklahoma in 1954, and I grew up there. Back then; Bartlesville was the headquarters for two large, well-known oil companies, Phillips Petroleum and Cities Service Oil Company. My father worked in the geophysical department of Cities Service, and my mother was a homemaker. The 1950’s and early 1960’s were an idyllic time to grow up, and Bartlesville was an idyllic place as well. It seemed that the two oil companies provided well-paying office jobs for most of the men in the town of fifty thousand inhabitants. Compared to other cities of similar size, I am sure there were significantly fewer poor people in Bartlesville, than in other places.  I didn’t grow up with a bunch of rich kids, but the families of all of my friends, certainly had enough income to pay for all of their basic needs with money left over.

I think the first event in my life that prepared me to be awakened to the lies our culture tells us (which didn’t happen until I read Ishmael in 1995) happened in December of 1960. It was a week or so before Christmas and I was walking home from the Will Rogers Elementary School where I was attending the first grade. On this particular day, another boy who lived a block away fell in with me as I walked. Although we lived relatively close to each other, Johnnie Wolf and I were not friends, and we did not usually spend time together. There were kids everywhere in our neighborhood, and I had probably ten or twelve friends who lived in the block between him and me. But it didn’t take long to figure out why he wanted to walk with me… He wanted to tease me because he had learned in school that day that I still believed in Santa Claus.

And I did believe in Santa Claus. After all, I was only six years old. Young enough to still remember some of the magical things a small child knows about, like Santa Claus that I didn’t have to pretend about or imagine. Admittedly, like all of us do, I was quickly forgetting about the magical world of small children. But I still remembered some of what it was like to live for the moment and to be aware of the things that go away when our egos start running the show. So, it wasn’t much of a stretch for me to believe in Santa Claus. After all, it was my mother and father who had told me the story of Santa Claus. I was confident they would never lie to me about something so important. Besides, he showed up every Christmas just like they said he would, didn’t he?

So, as we walked, Johnnie Wolf teased me and I told him to shut up and leave me alone. “Maybe Santa Claus doesn’t come to your house because you are naughty,” I told him. But he kept after me all the way home. And when we got close to his house, he really turned it up a notch. He started dancing around and calling me a little baby.

And that was Johnnie Wolf’s big mistake. I might have been immature enough to still believe in Santa Claus, but I was far from being a frail or helpless child. I got Johnnie Wolf down on the ground and began to beat the shit out of him.

But after I got him down and he could see how mad I was, and how he was about to get a real pounding, Johnnie Wolf realized he better stop teasing me, and start reasoning with me. So, in between blows he started saying. “Really, Don. I know what I’m talking about. Think about this…” And he would tell me something to help me to understand that Santa Claus was really pretend. I guess he got in about three or four good reasons before I decided he was sufficiently subdued and adequately punished enough for me to quit hitting him. He wasn’t hurt badly, but he did have a bloody nose and some pretty good bruises. I left him lying there and I continued up the street towards my house. As I walked, though, I started thinking about what Johnnie Wolf had told me there at the end. And before I got home, I realized he was right… There really was no Santa Claus.

At first, I was angry with my parents for lying to me… very angry as a matter of fact. But they explained to me they didn’t mean any harm. They only wanted me to enjoy the holiday like all the other children. So, I got over my anger and disappointment with my parents fairly easily. After that, however, I had to deal with the fact that the magical world I had believed in, of which Santa Claus was a part, did not exist. It was a terrible blow.

Looking back on that experience, I can see now that our culture uses the Santa Claus story very well for its devious purposes. It goes like this… As a small child, you are told by your parents, and by everyone else, that Santa Claus exists. You are told that Santa Claus is a wonderful and jolly old man who loves all children everywhere and he lives on the North Pole where a bunch of elves work all year under his direction making toys for all the good little girls and boys. You are told that Santa Claus has magical powers, which enable him to watch you from afar to determine if you have been a good boy or girl. And he has other magical powers that enable him to travel the entire planet visiting every house around the globe on Christmas Eve, riding in a magical sleigh pulled by eight flying reindeer. So, if you are good, then Santa will deliver presents to you and all the other good little girls and boys.

Eventually, we all reach an age where we are old enough so that we are able to see through this farcical tale. And when we do, we learn a very important lesson…  At least from our culture’s standpoint…

That lesson our culture wants to teach us is:

There is no such thing as real magic. Only a foolish and very young child would even think such a thing. You made that mistake once with your naive and foolish belief in Santa Claus. But that’s okay. You were just a little child. You are older now. Don’t do it again.

Fortunately, many of us know enough not to fall for this terrible lie our culture tries to tell us. I foresee a time when things we would call “magic” today will have scientific, and/or practical explanations. In fact, I am fairly certain there are spiritual masters alive today who have these answers already. There is no doubt that the quantum physicists are edging closer as well. The quest to understand the true nature of reality is pursued by way too few of us, and one big reason for that is our experience as little children with Santa Claus. While it is true that Santa Claus does not exist, it is not true that the unseen world of the shaman does not exist.

When I was a little boy growing up in Bartlesville, I was very interested in spiritual matters. My parents didn’t go to church, but when I was about five, because of my obvious interest, they embarked upon a mission to find the right church for our family. Eventually, after trying several, we settled on the big Methodist church located downtown.

I was an active participant in that church until I was thirteen, and old enough to join as a full-fledged member. The church had a course of study for kids my age who wanted to formally join. There were other kids like me who had been active in Sunday school and choir and the Methodist Youth Foundation, and a few of us were ready and eager to take the next step.  The course consisted of studying all the things that Methodists believed in, and while we were attending, we also had responsibilities for helping out around the church.

One day, as I was nearing the end of the course, I was in the sanctuary working on my assigned job of arranging the hymnals, pledge cards, pencils, and other material in the pews, and our youth minister, Jerry Perryman came in. He greeted me and asked how I was doing. I told him I had a question that had been bothering me and could I please ask him to help me with it?

I told Jerry that we have been spending a lot of time during the past few weeks learning about the process of salvation. It seemed to me that what we had been learning was very specific to Methodists.  What, I wondered, was going to happen to my other Christian friends who are Catholics, or Baptists, or Episcopalians or even to my non-Christian, Jewish friends? Obviously, they were not proceeding down the same road I was towards salvation. Were they going to make it to Heaven?

I have always been grateful for the honest answer I received from Reverend Jerry Perryman that day. Without my being aware of it, my question had gone right to the heart of one of the biggest flaws with organized religion, and Jerry knew that. But rather than try to put me off or deflect the question or bullshit me in some other way, he answered that yes, he would be concerned about the prospects of anyone getting to heaven who didn’t proceed in the Methodist way as I had been learning it.

Of course I was not pleased with the answer. I was only thirteen and not yet very learned or worldly, but I was pretty sure that God wasn’t like that. It made no sense to me that we could come to church every Sunday and learn about the love of God and then find out that it didn’t apply to my friends who were in another church singing similar hymns as members of the choir there, thinking they were doing the right thing and looking forward to making it to heaven also.

But by that time I was almost finished with the program and I went ahead and became a church member. However, I did stop attending church shortly thereafter. Much like losing Santa Claus, it was a big loss for me. Afterward, I had no mentor to turn to for guidance and I knew of no other way to satisfy my spiritual yearnings. At that time I was in the seventh grade in school. Then, just a few weeks later, I started seeing notices about a big event that was going to happen soon. There were going to be picnics and other activities for all the kids my age and older. Many of the popular girls I was interested in would be there.

The big event was a weeklong Baptist revival led by a young, evangelistic preacher named Richard Hogue. He was traveling all over the country with the goal of bringing as many kids as possible into the Baptist church. I had only recently been through the bad experience with the Methodists, and I was pretty sure the Baptists were not going to be any better in that regard. But I think it was the chance to spend some time with some interesting girls along with the social aspect of the event that attracted me more than anything.

I went to a couple of events and they were very well attended and a lot of fun. After the second one, they got all of us kids into the sanctuary of the big Baptist church downtown and then Richard Hogue stood up at the podium and started preaching about Revelations. I remember he would tell us in his big, booming voice that in Revelations such and such, it says that the world is going to come to an end when so and so happens…. “And brothers and sisters! Did you know, that very thing happened in such and such a place just last year!” And after a dramatic pause he would continue… “And let me tell you something my brothers and sisters!.. When the world comes to an end… if you have not already gotten down on your knees and accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, then YOU ARE GOING TO BE DOOMED TO ETERNAL HELL AND DAMNATION!”… And then he spent some time basically trying his best to scare the shit out of all of the poor kids in that big sanctuary. I’m quite sure most of them were probably there like me, just to have some fun. And then he told us all that the only way we could be sure that we would make it to heaven when the world comes to an end would be for us to get up out of our seats, and come down to the front of the sanctuary, and get down on our knees, and be saved.

During that service, he went through several more examples from Revelations about prophecies that portended the end of the world, always followed by stories about how that very thing had happened just recently. And after each new example he demanded that each of us should come up and be saved before it was too late. Richard Hogue was very persuasive, and very charismatic, and he had a lot of success with the kids in the big sanctuary that night. If memory serves, at least eighty to ninety percent of the kids went up to the front of the church and got saved. Even the ones who had already been saved figured they better do it again, just to be sure. I sat there fuming that God wasn’t like that, and wondering what does that say about a church when apparently they must stoop to using scare tactics to get people to join? But in the end, even I decided, “What the Hell can it hurt? Maybe I should do it, just in case.”

But, of course, the experience didn’t sit well with me. And the result of having two such horrible experiences back to back left me basically without anywhere to go for my spiritual needs. At that age, I wasn’t aware of the spiritual practices that are available to seekers of enlightenment from outside of organized religion. All I knew was that organized religion appeared to be total bullshit, and I wanted no part of it. Given my interest in spiritual matters from a very early age, it was a very disappointing realization. But I didn’t know what else I could do or where else I could turn for help.

I have never, even for a moment, ever regretted leaving organized religion. Spirituality is very important to me, though. I have read extensively on the subject ever since I was twenty years old. And over the years I have read numerous books by many different authors who all resonated very deeply with me. As I move my body, mind and spirit down the path, the road has become much clearer… and I am extremely grateful for that.

In 1998, oil was $10 per barrel and I had a consulting job for a client who had curtailed their operations because of the low prices. But they had a good team put together and they were reluctant to break it up. I was working for good friends and I realize also they were probably reluctant to let me go because they knew it would have been difficult for me to find other work when none of the other oil and gas companies were spending any money either. I had been coming into the office every day, and since we didn’t have any actual work to do, several of us were spending our time playing the stock market. After a couple of months of this, I became a little bit uncomfortable taking money for nothing and I started thinking about what I could do to change the situation. I had a little income from some oil and gas prospects I had invested in that had been successful. Also, I had just broken up with a girlfriend, so there were no relationships to keep me around. I had a pretty good start on a novel I had begun several years before, but had never made much progress on because I was always working. I started thinking that if I was in a Latin American country where the cost of living was lower, my oil income would probably be sufficient to sustain me for a few months while I worked on the novel. I researched the Latin American countries and Costa Rica popped out as the country with the most developed middle class and also the most active tourism trade. I decided I would drive down there and spend six months working on my novel, then return to the oil business when the price of oil and gas would presumably be higher.

But plans don’t always work out as you think they will. Before coming home, I ended up meeting a native Costa Rican who was a musician and a high school music teacher, getting married and starting a family. And as a result, my six-month trip turned into me spending the better part of five years in Costa Rica. We had a beautiful little house in Costa Rica that my now ex-wife had built about three years before we met, which we fixed up together after we got married. The elevation there is about 3,500 feet above sea level. The temperature is a pretty constant 75 degrees year-round. You could see the ocean from twenty miles away from the hills around our house. And from our front yard we had a view in the other direction of two eleven thousand plus foot volcanoes, the closest of which is about thirty-five miles away. The house had no air conditioner and no heater and no need for either.

I spent the better part of five years living in Costa Rica. My son, John Paul, was born there in the year 2000. (He was named after the Beatles, not the Pope!) Our family of three was able to live there very comfortably for about $1,500 per month. We had an old car that was paid for. Mayela had built her house on the cheap and it was also pretty much already paid for. After getting married, we shipped a container of my stuff down there, so our house had a lot of books and artwork and knick-knacks and nice kitchen stuff, and it was plenty comfortable. On this small monthly allowance, we were able to afford to have a lady come in three days a week to clean and do our laundry and ironing. We also paid very reasonable rates for others to perform many of our lawn and gardening chores. We were even able to make occasional trips to the beach and elsewhere. I think most of you who live here in the United States would be impressed that we were able to live so well in Costa Rica on so little money. The cost of living there is just that much lower than it is here. Phone, electricity and water bills are very inexpensive, although the frequent interruptions in water and electric service do make those prices more realistic. During that time, laborers in Costa Rica were making about a dollar and a half an hour, and they were able to support their families on that amount. Mayela was making about $700 a month as a public high school music teacher, and that was certainly sufficient income for many families in Costa Rica to live on.

During the past few years I have settled into a routine of preparing a few organically grown vegetarian dishes that I enjoy over and over again. I am not bragging when I tell you these dishes are so delicious and healthy that I never get tired of them. Even if it is only me eating them, I can cook enough at one time to last me several days, so the shopping, preparation, and cleanup involved in cooking these dishes for myself are not too cumbersome.

But even more convenient than cooking for more than one person at a time is eating out. For the past seven years I have been eating lunch regularly and dinner sometimes at an absolutely wonderful place serving organic vegetarian fare in Central Austin called Casa de Luz. (Spanish for “House of Light”) Their website prominently proclaims as follows:

“See us as your FARMACY

Let thy food by thy medicine and medicine be thy food – Hippocrates”

And above the entrance door to the dining hall in beautiful script it says,

When diet is wrong medicine is of no use.

When diet is correct medicine is of no need.

• Ayurvedic Proverb    –

Casa is open every day from seven in the morning to eight-thirty at night, and they serve breakfast, lunch and dinner. All of the offerings are vegan and organic. There is no menu that you order from at Casa. Breakfast is buffet style, but every lunch and dinner meal features a soup, a salad with a homemade nut or seed dressing, and a main plate with a featured vegetarian dish, a leafy green with a homemade sauce made from nuts or seeds, a grain such as brown rice or quinoa often with a tasty seed, nut, or mushroom topping, a legume, and a fermented cabbage, beet, or other veggie. To those of us who eat there often, the food is absolutely delicious, and I believe most who eat the fare at Casa for the first time agree. Admittedly, some who try it for the first time and are not used to eating healthy, vegetarian fare, consider it bland, which it most definitely is not.

One of the great things about Casa is the dining hall features mostly large tables that are conducive to communal dining. Because of this, everyone who eats there regularly eventually gets to know each other, which is one of the features of Casa dining that many people enjoy very much. When you are seated with several individuals who are conscious enough and conscientious enough to understand the importance of healthy eating, the conversations usually transcend the trivial, and can often be pretty enjoyable. Many of the topics discussed in Soft Landing have come up on more than one occasion with fellow Casa de Luz diners I have only just met.

The dining hall sits on the back of a beautiful property adjacent to Lady Bird Lake near downtown. When the founders of Casa acquired it in 1989, the grounds were the site of a rundown former meat packing plant. Today, the whole place radiates beauty and good vibes. I could go on and on about how great of a place Casa de Luz is. I have never heard of another place like it, and I believe it is unique in all the world. When your travel brings you to Austin, please don’t miss an opportunity to check it out.

Figuring out how to achieve a proper diet while living in this insane culture is much like swimming upstream against a strong current. It can be done, but it takes a lot of effort, a lot of self-reflection and a lot of questioning of cultural norms to be able to figure out how. Looking back on my own experience, I can see that listening to what my body tells me was a huge part of my own success.

As a young man, my body was fit because of my youth and because my athletic pursuits of high school football and other activities had made it so. During those years of relative youth, my body was able to withstand a pretty big onslaught of terrible but tasty food, alcohol, and even cigarettes. When I listened to my body during those times, it was generally in response to cravings for food or drink. Fortunately, even during my youthful years of relative debauchery, it was always important for me to be physically active, so the physical exercise was always there to help counteract the bad food, and the alcohol and the other poisons I subjected it to. Even while mired in this state of unconscious hedonistic consumption, it was obvious that cigarettes were harmful, and I gave them up repeatedly, twice for two years, and once for a year, before giving them up altogether when I was 34.

It has been 32 years since my last cigarette, and thankfully, it appears that my temporary organic vehicle has survived those patently stupid years of smoking. It took me another fifteen years to give up alcohol. I was 49 when I finally decided I had drunk enough alcohol for this lifetime. Not wanting to be the beer drinking dad to my three-year-old son provided the motivation for me to do that. With beer and cigarettes out of the way, diet related matters suddenly became more obvious to me. As I related earlier, I gave up meat for the planet but ended up embracing the personal health aspect of not eating meat through the experience of noticing how much better I felt without it. Wheat and dairy were also eliminated from my diet after I finally began paying attention to the adverse reactions my body would give me after consuming them. Ultra-processed foods like mac and cheese, breakfast cereal, candy, energy bars, and fast foods are not a part of my present diet.

These days I try to eat organic fruits and vegetables as much as possible, and often my body will complain to me pretty quickly if I eat a fresh fruit or vegetable that was not organically grown. It is a great pleasure to have been able to embrace the truth and wisdom of Michael Pollan’s dictum to “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” While it is true that I no longer have the pleasure of biting into a tender and juicy steak or hamburger, piece of pizza, doughnut, cinnamon roll, piece of birthday cake, or other meat, cheese or gluten infused foods, I do still enjoy the pleasure of biting into delicious salads, vegetable dishes, and soups that I get to enjoy and savor while also knowing that I am nourishing my body while consuming them. Most definitely, I can still enjoy many culinary delights while eating healthily.