Note in a Bottle: A Message of Hope and Personal Growth in a Rapidly Changing World

By Ron MacInnis

Note in a Bottle is for those who embark on a quest to understand themselves, the forces that shape them, and their place in the increasingly complex world of today. Through carefully chosen stories based on a lifetime of study and enriching encounters with a host of knowledgeable, fascinating people, this study traces a path from the indelible and influential experiences of early childhood through the developmental years and across the dark and seductive thickets of illusion and persuasions that assault our senses through adult life. The book eventually emerges in a clearing where you may find the sweet release that comes with a deepened understanding of the self, the world around you, and a much-sought-after peace of mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Apr 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781452595375

Ron MacInnis

Ron MacInnis is a published author, former broadcaster, innkeeper, teacher, and community developer who has spent a lifetime exploring the mysteries of the human condition and the path to individual well-being through extensive reading, study, and in conversation with interesting people from all over the world. He currently lives in Nova Scotia, Canada.

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Copyright © 2014 Ron MacInnis.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 978-1-4525-9538-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-9537-5 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 04/22/2014

it is,

for each and every one of us,

the challenge of our lives

to unravel

the tangled skeins of information,

false promises and illusions

that engulf us

and to weave a fine garment

of insight and wisdom

in which we can wrap ourselves

while the winds of change

blow cold and wild

around us

The miracle is not to walk on water:

the miracle is to walk on the green earth

dwelling in the present moment and feeling

truly alive.

—THICH NHAT HANH

For my grandchildren who,

when they get older,

will have to find their way through the world

we are leaving them

Preface

J ust imagine for a moment you have been living here on planet earth for some 69 years and you have enjoyed a full and adventure-filled life, and you have somehow, by various means found in your mind a place of peace, of contentment: of a comfortable sense of self-fulfillment, and a deep understanding of the world you live in and how it w orks.

Looking back, and knowing you will not be around forever, you realize that this mindset took a very long time to craft, and it was hard won: a shame it would be if you did not document your journey and share it, perhaps with your grandchildren, perhaps with certain friends or, for that matter, anyone in the wider world who might benefit.

Such describes the set of my mind as of this writing.

But there is more.

Besides the investment of some 40 years of insatiable reading and exploration on my quest for understanding, I found that in my careers as a writer, broadcaster, educator and innkeeper, I found some deeply knowledgeable accomplices that helped me along my way: a good many of them. These were highly evolved people from all walks of life and from many corners of the world: some professional, some who had taken too many wrong turns and learned from that, some just innately wise, and some who found their path to contentment buried deep in the fields of misfortune.

I learned a lot from these people: such is the subject of this book. Some shared their thoughts eagerly, some were reticent. But all those who had reached a place of mindful peace had one thing in common: they wanted to share their joy: to document their spiritual travels, their quests: to reveal their secrets although what is often called a secret today is little more than common sense…and time-tested wisdom. Which is what in the end provides the building blocks for the foundations of this book.

Over those years I took note of everything I heard and experienced, and then over a period of the last ten years, with grandchildren and later a larger audience in mind, I gathered all the shards of wisdom I had found and, beginning with my own earliest memories and lessons, strung them as pearls on a string in a logical and sequential fashion just as they unfolded for me. These facts, values or ideas I then held up against the mirror of history and the writings of the world’s great teachers so I might set them securely in a place of significance.

And that, friends old and new, is what you will find in the pages of this book.

And why A Note in a Bottle?

Because in our busy, noisy, information-soaked, worried world, overrun as it is with the voices of hucksters selling their phony dreams and materialist longings, we have come to live over the past number of years in what author Chris Hedges calls, an empire of illusion. Many of our longings, our values, our self perceptions have been artificially induced and serve not our interests, but corporate, political or religious ones.

By contrast, what you will find between the covers of this book is real.

Read if you will. It is, after all, just a note in a bottle. And you never know what kind of treasure you might find when a little package like this drifts unexpectedly into your life.

The adventure begins when you turn the page.

Blessings be,

Ron MacInnis

Woodside, Nova Scotia, 2014

Contents

Chapter 1   Genesis

Chapter 2   The Early Years

Chapter 3   The In-between Years

Chapter 4   Early Stirrings: the Birth of a Seeker

Chapter 5   A Time of Awakening

Chapter 6   Lessons Learned in a Little Village

Chapter 7   Religion, Love and Matters of Spirit

Chapter 8   The Chasm of Despair

Chapter 9   A Time of Darkness

Chapter 10   A Stranger Plants Some Seeds

Chapter 11   Light at Last

Chapter 12   Lessons Learned in a Darkening World

Chapter 13   Whisperings of a Quiet Mind

Chapter 14   Oceanstone

Chapter 15   Lessons Learned at an Inn

Chapter 16   Seeing with the Heart

Chapter 17   Breaking the Bud

Chapter 18   On Lenses

Chapter 19   The Pathway to Awakening

Chapter 20   Last Verses

Chapter 21   A Grandfather Speaks

Chapter One

Genesis

F rom whence the spark that causes books like this to be wri tten?

Well…

It was one of those very dark nights, I recall: totally dark; the kind of night that wraps you in a black cloak of unknowing but that is, at the same time, if one is open for it, reassuringly quiet and comforting.

There was but one spot of light on the winding path before me as I made my way from the inn that my family and I owned to the parking lot just up the hill to replace a burned out light bulb. That warming circle of light was cast by a small flashlight at my side, faithful little device that it was. I stopped for a moment and stared at the little pool of light on the forest floor and noted with affection how the little light had, for so long, guided me and our guests through the darkness and to the safety and warming comfort of their cottages or rooms.

My thoughts turned to the many interesting conversations in which I had engaged my guests over the years. While many were troubled, ill at ease or lost…and I helped those as best I could…another group seemed somehow radiant, alive, content and at peace with themselves and who they had become. One of the latter was a pilot of a large passenger jet. One was a world-class astronomer, one a supreme court judge, another a well-known movie star. There was an Indian swami, a beef farmer from the Canadian West, an Egyptian Orthodox priest, a person who ran a halfway house for battered women, a woman who ran a center for crack addicts in a large American city, a man who was the director of one of the world’s most popular television shows. There were many such people in my life now, I realized. Fortunately, at one level or another, I had briefly come to know them all, over dinner sometimes, or as we sat watching the sun slip down over the ocean on a quiet summer evening. I considered this a privilege. And it was endlessly fascinating.

In the end, over the twelve years I was at the inn, there were many hundreds of these people. They were all thinking folk, one way or the other well-educated (formally or informally), often well-read and all had stories to tell; good ones. Many of those stories proved to be pieces that fit into what was for me a larger puzzle.

Their conversations ranged from their personal state of mind and well-being to their thoughts about the unfolding world and the direction in which it was headed, for this was a matter of deep concern to them all. And there was good reason for this.

What I found intriguing about these people was that a certain number of them seemed to have experienced an awakening of some sort at a point in their lives wherein they found themselves in a state of mind one might describe as one of calm knowing. Or perhaps serene. Or at peace. This was a common destination at which they had all arrived by various routes through the jungle and the tangled underbrush of old ideas, possible plans, loud media persuasions, life philosophies and personal passions.

Conversation and camaraderie within this group of people, I noted, even though strangers to each other, was instant and deep. And common to all was the desire to talk about their wishes for the world, and these wishes, I discovered, were uncannily aligned with my own.

But through all the conversations an old question hung in the air and it was this: what was the route by which each of these people had found their way to this stable, comfortable and peaceful state of mind? This state of knowing? Surely no two came by the same path…

I slowly became preoccupied by this question and so I continued to explore their ideas until my preoccupation became an obsession.

What was most heartening, I noticed, was that all the people in question held fast to a certain set of common beliefs, of ideals, of guiding principles that illuminated and guided their lives and created a solid foundation of values around which their lives revolved. Among this sea of ideas were some words or values that recurred frequently in the conversation, and these tended to rise above the others and become as guiding lights or lenses through which they observed the world, often predetermining the path ahead. These same words shone from the pages of the world’s great literature.

With continued exploration, I found, these values, steeped in ancient wisdom, served as time tested guides for finding one’s way through the thickets of thought and brambles of delusion that characterize the mindset of many in our difficult days.

There was, in the end, I discovered, a body of thought, a mindset, a set of values with which I myself stood in firm agreement; one that could well serve individuals trying to find peace of mind in an ailing and endangered world. The core of that body of thought was not so large as to be unwieldy, but not so small as to be without copious substance. For it showed itself to be relatively compact, portable, and easily understandable: perfect for today’s busy world. One had only to keep it front of mind to find a better life.

I remember staring at the pool of light on the ground and pondering all this. Once again I wondered how all these people had found their way to this common, comforting mindset while so many others in the world still wandered, groping in the darkness, plodding along their own rough path, oblivious to the idea that there might be a better way. Why, I wondered, were so many in the western world held prisoner by an archaic set of delusional ideas, myths and values that served no better purpose, really, than to keep them in their place on an endless treadmill, pursuing the great materialist dream which was always just out of reach, and achieving little more than keeping the wheels of industry spinning at full speed?

No two of my awakened guests had followed the same path, obviously. But they had, somehow, all reached the same destination in much the same way as many roads can lead to a common point. And they were all in agreement that our world, our planet, our future as a species was at a dangerous turning point and in deep rooted need of some sort of spiritual rebirth: of a moral compass from which we might take heart and then direction, to guide us across the shoals of our increasingly complex, confusing, tumultuous and increasingly dangerous times.

Slowly, my thoughts began to gel, as I