A New Name

By Donnie Wilbanks

A childhood of poverty and severe physical, and emotional, abuse ended when the author shot his father at the age of 16. He survived, but the violence stopped. What started was a spiritual reckoning. The consequences of choices are relived through the lives of affected participants. Until understanding is gained you and your new white lights will be a prisoner of choice.

Will the light ever find its way past self-concern, vengeance, and intolerance? Will it ever come out of the darkness and home to the light at the end of the tunnel?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098311520

Book preview

Copyright 2019

ISBN: 978-1-09831-152-0

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contents

Foreword

Synopsis

Life 1: Hate

Life 2: Revenge

Life 3: Atonement

Life 4: Sacrifice

Life 5: Setting the stage

Life 6: Nothing

Life 7: Learning to listen

Life 8: Learning

Life 9: Bedlam

Life 10: A right thing

Life 11: Dream’s end

Foreword

Most of this book is semi-autobiographical. It is an accounting of racial prejudice, severe domestic and child abuse, and deep family dysfunction. Being shaped by such a childhood can warp a person, and through him or her a family through multiple generations, and trap it into repetitive cycles of cruelty, abuse, anger, and fear. Such a legacy was passed from my grandfather to my father, to me. I found passing it on to my children unacceptable, but though I was thoroughly familiar with what I did not want, I knew nothing of what and who I did want to be. How do you become something when you don’t know what it is? Eventually I discovered that belief ultimately determines behavior. The most effective way to reliably change what a person does, is to change what he or she believes. That is as true for me as for anyone, so my way of altering my own behavior, and avoiding passing a legacy of violence and abuse to my children, has been to change how I see the people who created my childhood by trying to understand what made their behavior necessary. That makes this also a story of understanding and healing. Such healing requires much more than the short term demands of physical mending. There is the much longer psychological process, and the much deeper spiritual one.

To live with the what, you have to understand the why. The why begins with how people can do the things they do to each other, and moves on to how any god could allow them to do it. This story is my answer to those questions. It is my personal mythology; my explanation of life and the world as I have known them, and the eternal, as I have come to understand it. It is a construction that allows me to live with hope and without hate and informs and guides my relationship with my fellow man, and with the world.

Synopsis

Everything is in place. New white lights have adjusted the frequencies of the eternal energy and have constructed a universe, and life has evolved. The lights dream the dilemmas that mesh them with their material creation to begin their long journey.

Little Donnie and his older sister walk into town with their father one day, while their mother, brother, and new born sister stay at home. Donnie’s father tells him to wait outside the store with his sister while he goes inside to take care of some business. As they wait, they notice a candy window in the next store, walk over, and peer inside through the window. As they survey the candy, a black man named Benjamin approaches and asks Donnie’s sister if she’d like a bag of candy. She says yes and Benjamin goes into the store and returns shortly thereafter with some treats.

Across the street, a group of men notice the exchange and immediately confront them, frightening the children. Benjamin tells Donnie and his sister to go into the store where their father is. They quickly do so, and their father comes out to see why they were sent inside. The group of men wrongly accuse Benjamin of trying to rape his daughter, and Donnie’s father, along with the others, attack him. However, Benjamin is too strong, and the men end up losing, causing a ripple effect of future events, which repeatedly perpetuate themes of revenge and hate that must somehow be overcome.

Guided in each afterlife, the white light whose dream created this scene lives and re-lives it through the lives, and from the viewpoints, of each major participant. It is a puzzle that only evolving into a higher self will resolve.

Will the light ever find its way past self-concern, vengeance, and intolerance? Will it ever come out of the darkness and be at home with the light at the end of the tunnel?

A new light—a singularity coalesced from the matrix of rhythms that envelops me. Others are aware of me, a new white light with a new name. It is a name earned like all names, perfectly expressing my unique set of finite characteristics. I am self-contained, set apart, real. I say my new name for the first time. Then I drift, and as I drift, I dream…

The faded girl held her brother’s hand and urged him on. His small legs struggled to keep up with their father, who strode ahead toward the small collection of unpainted board buildings gathered under an endless blue sky in the bottomland of the Missouri Bootheel. The road consisted of twin dirt paths surrounded by cotton fields exploding with white. Small groups made their way up and down long rows against the shimmer of the summer heat. Their father’s footsteps changed to hollow echoes as he stepped onto a plank sidewalk and slowed his pace enough for the three to travel together. At the second building, he stepped inside, telling the children to wait on the sidewalk.

They stood for a few minutes, then were drawn to a large window at the front of the next building that displayed an assortment of penny candy. The children gazed at the treats as if trying to memorize each shape and color. In time, they caught the attention of a man crossing the street. He was a man who people noticed; fully six and a half feet tall and dark black, and his skin shone. His arms and chest were enormous and rippling with muscle from a natural athleticism, coupled with a lifetime of work in the fields and loading and unloading the Mississippi river barges. He made his way to the children and stood with them, looking at the candy in the window. Then, he spoke, and the girl said, yes. He disappeared into the store, and a short time later, reappeared and handed her a small brown paper bag.

She squirmed with excitement, but before she could open the bag, they heard angry shouts from across the street, and five men soon stood around them in a semi-circle. Anger quickly turned to rage, and one of the children began to cry. The black man spoke, and those surrounding them stood silent and stepped aside long enough for him to direct the children to walk away and into the building their father had entered. Then, with deadly purpose, the five came at him, but he deftly and almost gently turned them aside and pushed them away. He fended them off, pleading in a calm voice for them to see reason and stop. They paused for a moment in confusion. It seemed as if they might walk away, but their father emerged to see why his children had been sent inside. One of the men said to him, This nigger tried to rape your daughter.

In that instant, together with the man who had informed him, he charged violently toward the black man. The black man stood his ground and moved between them, sending his accuser sprawling into the street and the children’s father flying head first toward the large display window. This cleared the way for him to run away, and it seemed as though the smaller men would never catch him, but instead, he whirled like an enormous cat and caught the flying father in mid-air just inches from the window. He lowered him onto the plank sidewalk and seemed to forget himself for a moment. He briefly lingered to be sure the father was all right. Then, the others were on him, beating and kicking him as he attempted to fend them off, still seeming to take care not to harm them. After a few moments, he uttered, Good Lord, no and stopped struggling. Almost immediately, he was clubbed and dragged away.

In the two hundred yards to the tree, the group drew a small crowd of angry spectators. Someone brought a rope from which they cut pieces and tied his hands and legs, and as he was coming around, they threw the rope over a tree limb, tied a noose, and pulled it over his head. He then stood and spoke, calling many in the crowd by name, and reminding them that they were better than this. In a gentle voice, he pleaded for them not to do this to him and to themselves. His words caused some in the crowd to pause, and one of them tried to stand in the way, even removing the noose from his neck. It broke his heart but healed his spirit to see the sacrifice the stranger made. However, it only seemed to further infuriate those with the rope and once again, they pulled the noose over his head, tied the other end to the axle of a wagon, and led the horse forward until it pulled him into the air. Time went by until many in the crowd grew restless and left, but his enormous strength showed no sign of giving out. Eventually the owner of the horse and wagon complained that he had work to do. Finally, someone brought a gallon of coal oil, and they doused him with it and set him on fire.

A song was forming in the conscious chaos, and I awoke from my dream as if stepping from one reality into another. Responding to the swelling tempo, countless white lights tuned their frequencies, searching for the necessary tones to weave their dreams into the one-song—the uni-verse we were creating. Harmonies emerged in the fabric we wove and began to develop aspects; tendencies, then rhythms, ultimately separating into finely-tuned frequencies that emerged as a great burst of tiny bubbles of space, then filled some of those bubbles and solidified as particles, each ruled by the characteristics imbedded in the frequency of its kind. Responding to these rules, the particles assembled themselves into ever more complex structures; simple atoms, stars, elements, compounds, nebulae, solar systems, galaxies, and webbed galactic clusters.

This universe we were creating contained a very specific, physical reality that was entirely unlike the comprehensive reality of the conscious chaos. In the conscious chaos, one’s unique frequency is influenced by—and influences—every other frequency it encounters, creating an ongoing, infinite variation in the overarching frequency of the One. All that has been or could ever be is in these variations in a realm where there is neither time nor space; where the past, present, and future and the possible outcome of every choice, exist simultaneously as the matrix that embeds us. However, the countless acts involved in weaving this specific reality were acts of will and choice. And every choice collapsed infinite abstract possibilities into a single concrete reality with its own set of finite characteristics. It was self-contained, set apart, and real, and as this reality grew, a universe evolved. Within this universe, events unfolded within space, and time measured the relative forward movement of all. However, each event presented new choices, and the inevitable variety of choices made split and re-split the universe into diverse realities as the outcome of each choice made proceeded along its own separate path in universe of its own. When viewed from the conscious chaos, the spaces and times of these separate, but related universes curved, folded, and nested each with the other—layer upon layer—held in place by the primary rule of universal attraction that pervaded and bound them all. These spooned layers offered the perfect tool for evaluating choices. By simply moving at a dimensional angle, one could travel freely back and forth between the layers from one reality into others. And within those layered spaces and times, there existed not the abstract imagined or intended, but the concrete real consequences of every choice made.

Inevitably most of the outcomes of the choices that formed these branches proved unstable and most of the universes collapsed, expanded toward infinity and tore themselves apart, or failed to form complex structures. In addition, many that were stable did not have the characteristics we were seeking. However, in those few that were stable and contained the necessary characteristics, solar systems formed and gave rise to planets that spawned life, and that life grew and flourished.

As non-material beings of the conscious chaos we stood outside of these layered universes, but many of us strangely yearned to become a part of, and experience—not merely observe—the concrete flourishing of realities they offered. That opportunity was created as life emerged and cells took shape. As part of every cell’s basic structure, a latticework of tiny hollow, interconnected tubes provided shape, support, and movement. Within the hollow cavities of these tiny tubes existed a vacuum. And in that specific vacuum, we could insulate ourselves from the influence of all other frequencies of the conscious chaos. As we resided there, we were cut off from the perspectives, accumulated knowledge, and communal memories of the conscious chaos, as well as the concrete realities of the times and spaces within other branches of the multiverse. In that self-imposed isolation, each of us was constrained within one dimension and moved with the cell through a single reality. We were locked into this space, this time, and this experience with the only influences being the characteristics of our own frequency and the frequencies the insulating tube picked up from the cell itself.

In this blindness, there was little to temper a perception, or the course of action powered by that perception, so consequences quickly became extreme and lessons learned were forged indelibly into the eternal characteristics of one’s frequency. The formation of such an independent frequency drew many of us irresistibly into this singular experience of living and feeling, and struggling and dying. We knew what the cell knew. The attractions, vibrations, heat differences, chemical signatures, electrical fields, and light in this small world imparted meaning and demanded reaction.

Following the rules embedded within them, the cells we inhabited responded to the varying conditions in which they lived, and branched into multiple major forms of life, with each form inevitably becoming increasingly complex. Complexity yielded ability, and one of those abilities—awareness, including self-awareness—reached a pinnacle in one of the forms—the animals—as a brain evolved and eventually developed the ability to become aware of concepts. The vast advantage to survival of such an awareness resulted in a scramble to organize objects and experiences