From the Mountaintop

By Campbell Bolwell

From the Mountaintop is a story about a solitary individual who spends his lifetime searching for the deeper meaning to life and trying to understand its purpose. Not satisfies with the explanation of existing religions he embarks on a lone journey of study and experience, unwilling to accept anything of faith alone and searching for evidence to

• Language: English
• Publisher: STAMPA GLOBAL
• Release date: Oct 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781951585242

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From the

Mountaintop:

A Journey of Self Discovery and Enlightenment

Campbell Bolwell

Copyright ©2019 Campbell Bolwell

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Introduction

Part 1 - Starting out

The way things are

Earliest memory

Life stages

Beliefs

Fear

Death

School

The influence of religion

Questioning my beliefs – Winston and I

The evolution of spiritual concepts

God in the new millennium

National prejudice

Technology concepts

Turning-points

The iceberg theory

Day of reckoning

The human condition

Drama in life

Taking risks

Escapism

Loss

Insecurity and impermanence

Fairness

The trailblazers

Part 2 - The Search

Seeking evidence

Trial and error

Relationships

Prejudice

Sex

Death of my brother

Observing patterns

Journey into madness

Scientific proof

Evidence of purpose

Meditation

Evolution of the physical universe

Evolution of life forms

Just another day

Evolution of intelligence

Consciousness

Part 3 - The learning

Seeking answers

Personal explanation

The reason we exist

Midlife crisis

The long journey

The school of life

Return to Los Angeles

Unconscious evolution

Nacadoc – They have something!

The development of society

Cheating death

The lessons

Waiting

Self interest

Part 4 - Karma

Cause and effect

Karma

Suffering

Guilt and punishment

Inequality

Competition and failure

Disproportionate effect

Advancement

Problems in perspective

Meditation

Introduction to Saigon

Part 5 – The mind

Educating the mind

Our concept of self

Meditation

The conscious mind

The subconscious mind

Relaxing in Saigon

The inner-self

Dreams

Above Saigon

Curiosity

Different paths

The power of the mind

Mind-fragment

Self realisation

Hypnosis

Exercise in visualisation

Tony’s story

Mind over matter

Training the mind

Repetition

Affirmation

Visualisation

The road to enlightenment

Knowledge and wisdom

Part 6 - The awakening

Time

Sowing and reaping

The wedding

Our life’s purpose

Intelligence

Tony, again

The way forward

Miracles

Death of my father

Individuality

Responsibility

China

Slaying the demons

Observations

Torture in Phnom Penh

Lessons

Selfishness

Letting go

Reversal of fortune

The big picture

Revelation

Stillness

Taking stock

Mindfulness

The endgame

Evolving a different way of thinking

Politics of compassion

True spiritual freedom

Finish

About the Author

No Other Way

So, I said to my soul,

"Go down, and live awhile with Mankind.

Taste the passion of involvement.

Rub shoulders, raise a flag, and follow your saints and gurus.

Feel the pull of various attachments to people—to things.

Smell the dust; feel the pain; battle with lust and desires.

Suffer grief; letting your tears fall upon the dust to nourish it.

Live with the anxieties and phobias of a life without security, knowing that at any time, death’s stalking will one day take you by surprise.

Struggle for survival; fight for your rights.

Unleash your self-righteous anger and frustration at injustice, whether real or imagined.

Then when your mind quietens, open your vulnerable heart to feelings - the bitter and the sweet.

Become involved!"

"Go down and spend some time in the prison of the flesh, and within your awkward body of clay you may discover a tiny chink of light that will illuminate the reason you exist.

In the midst of this crazy insane asylum of life you may witness a split second of self-revelation.

You may glimpse an infinitesimal speck of awareness of the greater purpose beyond all life.

It will motivate you to change the way you think in all your future journeys—to seek your path. Forever!"

I said to my soul, "Go down!

For this is the only way to gain experience; and experience is the only way to grow, to shake off the lethargy and avoid stagnation on the path to perfection.

For there is no other way, but to go down."

- Campbell Bolwell, 1978

Acknowledgments

This book was nearly 10 years in the writing and it endured many rewrites until I was satisfied. I am indebted to Joanna Bates Literary Consultancy in Calgary, Canada, for her guidance and Shawn England, a noted historian and literary authority from the University of Calgary, without whose help and inspiration this manuscript would be much less readable.

I dedicate this book to my deceased brother Winston who was always my inspiration and was taken from us too soon at the young age of 29.

Introduction 

I am old now—chronologically at least—having just reached the seasoned age of sixty. I don’t feel old. I had a mother who lived to ninety, for heaven’s sake. I go to a gym regularly, have my Porsche in the garage, and a group of companies that support my lifestyle and keep me flying around the world, never allowing me to stay in one place for too long. Convention says I should slow down now, but I feel too alive and vigorous. My two sons and their families, my partner, close friends and many wonderful young-thinking people surround me. But I don’t kid myself—I am closer to death each day I live, and the chances of me falling off my twig are greater now than they were ten years ago—I know that. Statistics, you see.

I have something important I want to share with you. I relax here in my comfortable chair and reflect on my motivations for writing this book. I didn’t do it for money—I am already comfortably well-off and further vast sums are meaningless to me now. Perhaps it is fame. Don’t we all want to be celebrated and enjoy the trappings of popularity and the unadulterated admiration of the masses? Perhaps I want to establish myself as famous. You know, a literary icon or something. No, I don’t think it’s that either. After all, we are all dust soon enough. Besides, there is something phoney about fame, generated as it is by media attention and marketed like any other product. I am just an ordinary person, a simple person, but I have had some extraordinary experiences and it would be an act of extreme selfishness on my part not to share them with you. This is my motivation.

You may not agree with what I say. That’s okay! I don’t expect everyone to see what I see and observe what I observe. You may not be ready to share it or understand it, you may have your own observations, and that’s okay too. You may read it, even enjoy it, but you may only understand and retain a few of the images that are somehow important to you and strike a chord with your own experience. That’s fine! People who have already read this manuscript comment on aspects that touch them and experiences that remind them of their own, but all remember different aspects, and for different reasons.

So, I am relaxed about that if you are. Most of my stories are written in the present tense. That is because this is the way they are stored in my memory—I live them now. That is how they rush to the surface. Although they are in the past, they are still relevant and alive to me now, not as some fading recollections that need to be written down before they eventually disappear into the deeper recesses of my subconscious mind. These stories are illustrations, snapshots or windows of awareness if you like. I am free to take them out and look at each one and always I discover some new meaning emerging. These stories illustrate my journey of discovery and enlightenment, and woven within and behind them all is the description of my version of reality as it unfolded to me.

Yes, I admit I have changed some names and details out of respect for the privacy of others, but the essence is true and relevant. I tried not to gloss over the painful details or diminish the rapturous. I tried to give weight to each experience as it relates to my development of the greater picture that I will reveal to you.

This book is intensely personal, and you may ask why I would want to bare my soul like this and let others rake over the burning embers of my own sacred memories. Why would I do that? Because I feel it could be beneficial to others, that they too will be encouraged to sift through their own memories and reveal to themselves their own journey of discovery and their own unique purpose in life. They will be encouraged to continue their spiritual evolution.

Relax now. Take your time, and let me share these experiences with you.

Universal Laws

(Description and explanation)

Universal Law of Temporary Existence

Nothing physical is permanent. Death is inevitable at some time.

Universal Law of Transition and Change

Everything is in a state of change. Nothing remains still. That without purpose must yield to whatever has living driving intention. That without definition will be dominated by the distinct. That without direction is weakened. That without vision of consequence will eventually languish into chaos.

Universal Law of Physical Limitation

We are all limited by physical laws while in physical reality.

Universal Law of Restraint

Behavioural restraint displays intelligence (forgoing instant gratification for greater benefits later) and creates energy for physical and spiritual advancement.

Universal Law of Cause and Effect / Cause and Consequence / Karma

Every effect is the result of some cause. Suffering is the result of past actions. We reap what we sow.

Universal Law of Attraction

We attract to ourselves that which we concentrate on or the nearest thing to it. In this sense we create our own reality.

Universal Law of Unequal Return / Disproportional Effects

Effects of our past actions are out of proportion to their cause. They are never equal.

Universal Law of Evolution / Development

Everything is in a state of evolving—the universe, life forms, even our consciousness.

Universal Law of Growth and Decay

There is a cyclic movement within evolution as it moves through the birth, growth, and death cycle.

Universal Law of Time

The essence of time creates a chronological framework within which evolution and cause and effect can function.

Universal Law of Probability

Evidence and proof are not always available, at which point an assessment must be made based on probability of outcome.

Universal Law of the Jungle

Eat or be eaten, kill or be killed, smash or be smashed. Another way of saying: Lead, follow or get out of the way.

Universal Law of Imbalance / Inequality

The 70 / 30 rule applies between inputs and outcomes.

Universal Law of Relinquishment / Letting Go

At some point in our lives we must let go (relinquish) all that we have and hold dear.

Part 1 - Starting out 

The way things are 

It doesn’t take long to realise that the world is not a safe place. It is full of people in search of something—love, security, reassurance, or perhaps something to fill the spiritual emptiness inside them. It is full of damaged and fractured people, sometimes the result of influence by parents who are themselves damaged and fractured. Some succeed despite their harmful environment. They emerge from impossibly disastrous situations to grow up and become well-rounded individuals—nobody knows why these people beat the odds against them. Others will sink deeper into a world of suffering and endure even greater injury to themselves and those who follow, perpetuating sorrowful patterns that become intrinsic parts of their lives.

Whatever our fortune, we soon discover that the world is filled with pain and suffering. There is not one person who is not suffering, or has suffered in some way. We do what we can to protect ourselves against this hurt, but it hangs ominously over us, and we can’t seem to escape. We all have something in common—we live, we suffer, and we need to know why we are here. We have a common cause. We need to examine our lives and discover the cause of our pain and torment.

Yet we are also individuals, with different attitudes and beliefs, and the suffering we each endure will have different causes. What is it that makes us unique? Many psychiatrists tell us that our behaviour and attitudes to life are formed in early childhood. They say that the first three years of our life are critical because we establish most of our behaviour patterns during that period. They even claim that our very earliest single memory is very important to the way we see the world—it is a defining experience.

Earliest memory

There is an old wooden table, polished clean by a thousand washes that bleached its patina to a soft dull grey. I sit on top in a tin baby bath (this is before plastic ones are invented) and look up at the familiar big people who loom over me, their shadowy faces backlit by a single kerosene lamp hanging from the rafters. I am not yet two years old. They are always hovering, and I am comforted by their familiar sounds and some words I recognize as I look up smiling. I am absorbed in the strange glow given off by the light. I am not yet aware that it will be another twelve years before I live in a house with electricity, or that this house is one of a handful situated in a little country town called Bring Albert. Who invents these names anyhow? Bring Albert sits in Western Victoria bordering the Australian Outback. I am not aware that half way around the world there is a fierce battle being waged, a gigantic struggle for world domination—the second big war. I am not aware that men are being killed on distant battlefields even as I sit here relaxing in the warm water.

I am stimulated by sounds and light and touch. I like to play with things, and at this moment I am comfortably playing with that strange appendage that protrudes from between my chubby legs. It feels good!

Don’t play with that. The noise is coming from my aunt as she moves closer. I sense a frown on her face. I look up at the noise and smile, with big brown innocent eyes that could melt any mother’s heart.

Don’t play with that, I said. The noise repeats itself, except this time there is a sharp stinging slap on my offending arm and it is pulled away from my plaything. She probably means no harm, but I don’t know that. My smile is gone now and my lower lip quivers. I am now confused and bewildered by this strange behaviour of the big ones.

Observation: Other creatures, particularly the big ones, don’t want you to enjoy yourself—it makes them uncomfortable. They feel happier when you suffer a little and are as miserable as they are.

Whether one such early experience influences the way we view the world is debatable, but our whole lives are shaped by a range of such events. Our perspective on reality is likely to be faulty, simply because we live constantly within this limited physical environment from the day we are born until the day we die; we know nothing else. A fish swimming around in its pool of water will see only a water-based reality. It might know that somewhere above, in an atmosphere that it cannot survive in, there exists danger and food. It sees its water environment as infinitely more real than any other. Similarly, we sometimes get glimpses of patterns within our universe and evidence of a reality beyond ourselves, but the bigger picture eludes us. We may pause and suspect that we have missed something, that there is something deeper and more profound out there. Perhaps within our searching we even hope there is. Death, pain or disaster can motivate us to seek and uncover a deeper purpose to our lives and to find some explanation for our existence.

Life stages 

Though we remain imprisoned by our environment, our perception of reality does change over the years. As infants we are aware only of our most basic needs—to be fed, nurtured and sensually stimulated. The wider world is going about its business, but our world, our reality, extends only as far as we can see and touch. We are not aware that an incredibly rapid learning process is taking place inside our tiny minds. Layers of reality unfold as we are exposed to the life experience. Already we feel the pain and discomfort of physical existence as we adjust to the process of extending our senses into a physical plane.

Around three years of age we enter a broader phase of exploration and awareness as we start to sample the diversity of life. This period is filled with wonder and excitement at the most elementary experiences—the shape of a cloud, watching the path of an ant, seeing the structure of a leaf or observing its erratic journey as it falls from a tree. Most of us will badger our parents with the eternal question: Why? Our exasperated parents often discourage this nuisance question because they tire easily, they don’t think it important to a youngster’s growth, or, most likely, because they themselves don’t know the answer. Eventually our young minds relax and similarly accept not knowing the answer.

As we grow older our childhood is more formally structured to enhance our learning. We start our schooling, the process of being moulded to suit our social environment. This process of compliance and sameness encourages the painless streaming of our individual child-self into our society. We are conditioned to accept the rules and beliefs of the society we are born into. We are indoctrinated through rituals to internalize the attitudes of our larger society, especially its religion and national patriotism. We are not asked if we agree with them, because we are not in a position to make an informed decision. However, we adapt well to new information at this impressionable age. We very quickly become products of our environment. We learn consumerism, ownership, the law, our rights, the politics of authority and the art of self-gratification. We learn the boundaries of acceptable behaviour and the levels of our society’s tolerance of miscreants. We adapt!

In our social interaction, the sharp corners are persistently and methodically worn off our individuality until we become well-rounded citizens. Some adapt more quickly than others. Some develop leadership skills, others the skills of invisibility. Some become victims, others victors or predators and manipulators. Some are intense and absorbed in their worries, a legacy of nervous but well-meaning parents. Some become adepts at opportunism and salesmanship. Others are happy-go-lucky individuals, content to relax and let the world go by.

Nevertheless, our formal education takes its toll, for the moulding process is imperfect. It teaches us to read and write but fails to help us deal with the most important things in our lives—our emotions, daily survival, and developing self-esteem. Our development is sometimes botched by insensitive teachers who failed their own test of survival in the world of commerce and industry. All too few are there because of their dedication to the teaching process. Although society demands an increasing amount of formal education before assimilation into successful career-based adult life, the process is sometimes damaging through its lack of encouragement and its stifling of creativity and individuality.

Some of us (myself included) escaped the structured halls of learning before any permanent damage was done. Some are content to stay there in the comfort of academia for most of their lives, where they are often protected from the real world. Their monastic world of learning sometimes shelters them from the valuable experience of being commercially responsible for themselves and their decisions. They may have little or no feedback on their effectiveness as teachers. Some never accept the blame if their students fail and rarely are gratified by student successes, because the influence of their teaching extends well beyond the schooling days of their pupils. Unfortunately, they are largely isolated from the ramifications of their teaching. In some rare cases, they live and work in the halls of learning after long since giving up on their own personal development. Teaching is truly a great and noble profession, but resourceful, effective and dedicated teachers are relatively scarce. Many are largely unaware of the powerful lingering influence they have on the young lives that pass by them.

The next phase of our childhood can be traumatic. Just when we are adjusting to our formal education experience, our bodies are bombarded with hormones. The physical comforts and expectations to which we have already adapted are turned upside down. We are subjected to mood swings, acne, depression, mysterious aches and pains and feelings over which we have no control. We enter phases of infatuation and romance, being confronted head-on with our developing sexuality.

What is happening here? Nature is teaching us, preparing us, and even forcing us towards some form of pair-bonding. We are confronted with the fact that we have an inbuilt need for intimacy. We suddenly discover that life is all about relationships. We flounder around amid experimentation and embarrassment as we try to come to terms with it. We try to develop associations. We desperately want to belong to the gang; we want to be in and, most of all, cool. The learning process brought on by these relationships will consume us all our lives. It is relentless and our emerging sexuality merely complicates things.

Social and biological pressures lead us into permanent and semi-permanent relationships, usually, although not always, with the opposite sex. The rituals of engagement and marriage reinforce our natural pair-bonding instincts with society giving the additional weight of legality to this curious entanglement. Thus, marriage becomes a legal contract. Children are the natural consequence of this pair-bonding, perpetuating the life cycle, strengthening our society and, through the selection process, ultimately ensuring the survival of our species.

We enter the phase of parenthood where, if we haven’t already learned it, we are taught tolerance—by our own children, who aren’t even aware that we have (or had) certain standards of perfection and certainly don’t abide by them. Our personal expectations, ambitions, visions, and dreams are tempered and our plans for the future adapted to the needs of family. We are no longer our own person. We might move from the radical left to the conservative right of politics. Our youthful ambition and idealism become muted, and is eventually discarded. We are too busy caring for our offspring to be concerned much about ourselves. As to questioning the meaning of life—forget it!

As we watch our own children grow through the same learning experience we went through, we embark on a trajectory of acquisition. We work and save hard to provide for a lifestyle level always a notch or two above our means. This is a time of high energy and accomplishment, where we put into practice the skills we learned during our formal education. These learned skills may have been necessary to get us started in our professional careers, but we find that the real world is a far better teacher—more intense, more thorough, but less forgiving. However, our blend of training, experience and energy is usually a highly successful combination.

In midlife we reassess our lives, entering a time of crisis where we ask ourselves, What’s it all about? The full weight of our transience hits us. Our expectations are never fully realised. We look in the mirror at a few grey hairs and see our parents looking back at us. In shock we realize that this is not a rehearsal—it’s for real. This is our last chance to get it right, we figure. Sometimes we change partners or reassess existing relationships. It turns our lives upside down for a while as we pause, look around at our dull mundane existence, and ask, Is this all there is?

Our midlife passes more rapidly than we expected. Time speeds up. Our children grow up and seem to become better than us, more talented and smarter at using those damn computers. Our hair greys, our skin wrinkles, and our body finally succumbs to gravity, sagging in all the wrong places as we experience the aging of our physical vehicle. We may modify our maintenance schedule, join a gym (at least for a while), subscribe to Weight Watchers, and generally improve our diet. We have long since moved from active sports to low impact exercise.

Despite our vitamin intake and some subtle plastic surgery, the body clock moves on relentlessly and the aging process continues unabated. Our children have produced children of their own, perpetuating yet another generation. Grandchildren! The mystery of our existence reasserts itself. In our despair and developing cynicism we are suddenly struck by the shortness and unfairness of life.

Time is accelerating us into old age. Our offspring see us getting slower, but we know this is an illusion—time is merely speeding up. Our bodies pass their use-by date as one by one our organs cease to respond to repairs and medication, our arteries clog, or some disease wrecks our insides. Death may be slow or mercifully quick, but the inevitability of death does not change. We will be briefly mourned by our survivors, perhaps even remembered with fondness and love, but we will pass on, just as our survivors will in time.

Beliefs 

The rare quiet moments when we question the reason for our existence will occur periodically and naturally during the course of our lifetime. Thinking about it too much makes us anxious and depressed, because behind all the bravado and blind faith there is no certainty. It hangs like some unfinished thought above our minds, making us uneasily desperate, and our spiritual hunger is still there. Many cannot tolerate this unease and find comfort in some structured religious belief. In such cases, someone else has already thought matters through and given us apparent answers in some written creed. All the world’s great religions with their mixture of folklore, myth, historical events, and divine interpretations have evolved systems of belief, tradition and ritual to make themselves acceptable to as many people as possible. It is natural that we may accept one or another of these.

In my early childhood I believed in the Christian version of God. I was also taught that the world was a dangerous place and there were many things to fear—especially God. It helped to have a fearsome God that we could pray to for protection from even more fearful things.

Fear 

I am six years old and it is a hot summer in the northern Victorian country community where my father is the sole schoolteacher. Well, it’s not really a community. There are no shops for fifteen kilometres, and the larger town of Shepparton lies an hour south by car along corrugated dirt roads. Still, there is a little wooden church and a small public hall just down