Chapter 3

A fellow I befriended while serving in the military in the late 1960s spent most of his army career disarming undentonated bombs up and down the Vietnam coast. He was wounded several times and one time almost died of shrapnel wounds while lying in a hospital ship off Da Nang. When the war ended he came back to the States and set up a business in Colorado. We kept in touch over the years and I learned that he fell into deep depression after his wife died. To help him on the road to recovery, he took up yoga and meditation which finally led him into a class on self-discovery. In the class he had to get in touch with his feelings. "Confronting my feelings was the scariest thing I've ever had to do," he said. "I had never faced fear like that in my life. All of those years of coming face to face with bombs did not prepare me for the terror I felt when I had to expose all of those emotions and thoughts that had never been uncovered. I was so terrified I literally broke out in a cold sweat the first time I realized those feelings." Confronting feelings is not an easy job for many people, but once the process begins, a whole new world opens. The opening of that world allows you to see things never seen before. Getting in touch with feelings opens the doors to awareness and reality. Not only that, but getting in touch with feelings allows you to become more...