The Last Gold Ring: A Saga-Initial Offering A Beginning

By Wiley Backlash

This saga is the expression of me understanding myself, also to my children so they can reconcile the persona and actions of the father. To Boo, my wife, and close friends who watched helplessly as I imploded. I used all my God-given talents to become wealthy then burned it to the ground before I turned forty-five, and I took them with me. Untouchable to touching nothing. Ironically one of my true passions is studying religion, history, and philosophy. Then I went and tried to twist it with my big-ass head and fell headfirst into my own trap. As my own captive alone, I had major time on my hands to reflect. Remorse wasn’t good enough; I had to make amends not for them but for me. Every word I had ever read now had a new deeper meaning, mixed in with a lot of dogma. A dramatic divine disclosure followed. I clearly saw all I have ever done, and clarity filled in the motive. I cried alone for months. The revelation of how I slowly gave in to a dark abyss made me hang my head low. So many times and ways I could have stopped and just didn’t. My brilliance was going to ride the storm out, one of my gifts. It was a TKO first second of the first round, and I had the pleasure of seeing it come. I did not believe anything could stop me in my tracks, but I could. It was not like I had to give up something to begin again. I had nothing left; that part was easy. I gave into something bigger than me after hurting all I knew, with me being hurt the most. I knew I was not a singular but part of a whole, and from now on, I would help the idea instead of causing destruction in my wake. In so doing, I embarked on a mission to rediscover truth then live it no matter where it led. This is that idea written down. It is all the little things we are capable of. Now I can’t stop, so there will always be more to come. Peace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662466960

Book preview

True Confessions

Iam (crazy good first four words, or am I bad?). Who am I? Oh yeah, a son, brother, dad, husband, sibling, and just an ordinary man in a play called creation. I play a character named Wily Backlash who has a sole charter to become aware. That means he finds the true meaning of his existence. So how in the world do you do that? Aware. Aware of what? I am aware of myself. I completely realize I am here. I have watched myself grow up and have the scars to prove it. Those scars are physical, mental, and spiritual. I have personally licked each one. In general, I have lived. So far, it’s been a roller-coaster ride. Such a wide-reaching life. I have touched many different areas of experience most people haven’t. I have been blessed with being able to fulfill most of my dreams. Even if some remain only attempts, some were realized (achieved).

I have done everything—from flying airplanes to skydiving, spelunking, to cenote-diving to being on stage in very odd places around the world. Went and built a church in the middle of a jungle in El Salvador for the thrill factor alone. My daughter and I climbed up a pyramid and went inside the small temple on top while exploring the ancient ruins somewhere in Mexico in another jungle scenario. I adore woodworking and create on a daily basis, which thrills me to no end and makes me happy. If I prick myself, I bleed and feel that woozy feeling. I love my dogs to death; when it is their time to die, I will cry like a baby. When a loved one is hurt, I even feel their pain, and I have laughed so hard I have cried. I also know what fear is. Pain is no stranger to me. I have broken my body in my youth, mentally strained myself as a young man, and spiritually harmed myself as an adult. Stress has surely tried to age me. My very favorite feeling is exhilaration because I am an adrenaline junkie. Yet I have been perplexed. I have stood in awe while admiring works of art. Leonardo DaVinci, Heron, and Imhotep are my favorites. I have also been devastated at horrific events, sorrow to the point of weeping openly. Is that all it could be?

Probably not because I have likes and dislikes. I prefer somethings over others. I believe one thing and flatly deny other things. I have refined my beliefs over the years. A better way of saying that is, what I believe now has presented itself to me over the years, and I have adopted the method or design of the abstraction.

To know me, you have to love me, or you will give up. I remember and forget stuff all the time. I am not good at keeping small items in locatable places. Under no circumstances give me anything small for safekeeping, like the keys to your car while we are at the park, unless safekeeping means so safe even I can’t find it. I could write the Lord of the Rings in a couple of sentences. Just give me the ring. I will promptly lose it. The ring would even be lost to itself. No one would ever be able to find it, and everyone would be safe. That is a very true statement, and that would probably be the only good ending for this particular gift of mine. As you might guess, this bothered me for some time. I used to try to work on that, but it only seemed to make it worse. So I gave up on the idea that I could fix it. Then I just started to go with it; it made things easier. I have very specific places for everything. Still works to this day for the most part. I know, probably not the best response, but there are much bigger fish in the sea to fry first. Besides that, I have oddly grown fond of that quirk; keeps me grounded.

So I am aware of all this, but is that good enough? By definition, aware means having knowledge or perception of a situation or fact. So as far as aware goes, I thought perception was the magic word here. Apparently, perception, by definition, means the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses. A little bit of a play on words. Seems both definitions use the other word in them. So I thought about it for a while, and the best I came up with is, both words mean practically the same thing. Both definitions are easy enough to comprehend. I think I got this just fine, but I didn’t.

The only problem was, I was not paying a bit of attention to anything around me. My world consisted of a two-square-mile perimeter around my house, and that was about it. I had a couple of friends, and we did the boys will be boys things. At that point in my life, I was a young man; and as a young man, I thought I was both aware and had a handle on perception. Youth again, what can I say? When you are sheltered from the world, you are a badass in your own mind.

I was going to go out there and shake up the world with my new and intense way of things, the likes of which the world has never seen. I have always felt that way. I read a lot of comic books back then. It was why I thought I was better than most at anything, and I do mean anything. So I went out and tried it all. I don’t have memories of some of it. Yet I have the scars. Sometimes my pursuits rendered me unconscious. The things I thought I got away with where countless, so I grew bolder. I had quite a split personality back then. I had the in-the-house persona and the out-of-the house persona. The reasons for my actions grew ignorant in equal measure with my boldness. That could get pretty damn ignorant. I wanted to play your game in character. Then outplaying you was the ultimate reward. That meant eating you for lunch. Why? Your game had one rule—just win—so I applied that rule to me. You were not a person anymore. You were subject matter to be manipulated. All the twists and turns were just like skiing, and I got good at it. Make it to the end of the course without hitting anything, you win. This is, quite honestly, how I viewed life at that time.

I went from being very shy and insecure to really enjoying the limelight of being crazy and unpredictable. In a child’s world, this makes you important, the life of the party and so on. It also brought on many altercations with the police. I became the bad boy if you will. If I would have been thrown in jail then, I would have been the one eaten for lunch. Thank you, God. I should have been aware that I had no handle on perception at all, too busy with the popularity contest. The one thing these actions did bring to the forefront of my person was a very quick and clever mind. You had to be convincing liar to get away with something, especially if you got caught. Then you are Mr. Innocent. Looking back, I was not very convincing.

To my parents, I am sorry. I realize now my actions really compromised your faith and reputation, all the things you earned. I understand why you believe in a devil. I have exercised my right to perverseness for its own sake predictably. Tell me that is not a horrific way to use boldness. I honed these talents on my parents, but I was late to the game; my sister beat me there. I played a strong second.

Short story: They didn’t believe half of what I claimed. I didn’t believe the other half of what I claimed. The truth is, I have no clue why I’m not dead, in jail, or have a mountain of DWIs. Defines all the friends I had back then. We egged each other on. With one exception, Wayne. Hope you are well. The only kid in the neighborhood who was picked on more than me. Why? I picked on him. Then we were friends. Strange how that works.

Now, as I was growing up, scheming came easy to me. Don’t really know why. Rarely did any event or movie leave me in suspense. They were just like my games. It was Dewey, Screwum, and Howe LLC. There is always a tell. Knowing this for a long time, I rebelled on every level. Developed an ass-backward life and home for dinner at 5:00 p.m. Honestly thought no more of it. Till I left home. Sometimes there was no dinner. Yet I played the game, being whatever character needed at the time to win, a chameleon if you will. I simply strolled through my little world, trying to make people believe I was King Shit of Turd Mountain, when, in fact, I was still a frightened little man, insecure with my own person. This feeling drove me to great lengths in desperation. I deceived myself and tried to deceive everyone else too. This was done on any and all scales. I did not want to be weak and frightened anymore.

Through everything, I had a huge dream. It was going to be glorious King Wily to the rescue of all, including damsels in distress. If I only knew I was dancing on the head of a pin, it would have been much easier maneuvering through what I considered life, with the added bonus of less pinpricks. In time, pinpricks didn’t bother me anymore. Dancing on spikes—now they hurt.

As I got older, there were small pockets of time that I reflected on my meaning of life, like anytime I fell on my own damn spike. In these times, my wits were less dull for a while. Without doubt, when my children were born. To all reading this, make it a point to witness birth at least once in your life. If that doesn’t make you at least ponder the thought of God’s existence, nothing will.

The entire event is miraculous from start to finish, when two different beings come together, and a new life is conceived. Parts of each somehow know to connect and become one new thing. This new being pushes forward into the physical world in an awe-inspiring fashion. Unbelievable to witness, you will not be able to look away. There is intense pain and beauty all mixed together, and this is entirely unstoppable. The entire area in which this happens is filled with a special energy which can only be described as consuming the most intense pain, then pleasure. You will cry, can’t help it. To watch life begin is awesome and unforgettable. The special energy is at 100 percent; your entire being feels it. What a wonder. It should be on your top ten list.

On the other end of this spectrum is our release from the physical we refer to as death. This, more than birth, will make you ponder life. Yours. Then that God idea reoccurs. You could be next. Passing is met with some degree of sorrow and grief by those left behind, some very intense, some subdued, all equally coping on the inside. The passing of the physical body creates the illusion of being separate from a loved one. We so depend on sight or touch to determine existence in this realm we damn near use these exclusively as a point of reference. We long to hold in our arms that which we care for. This soothes and comforts us to no end. There is a true emptiness in knowing you will never touch that which is gone ever again. All of us have experienced this emotion throughout our time here and will again before it is our time to go.

Maybe! My first experience with death was with my dog. I watched her get hit by a car; it shredded my life. These ten seconds are burned into my mind forever. Disbelief and pain with way too much remorse. I can clearly see it right now in my mind’s eye. That happened decades ago. The only other times I pondered life was when a great change took place and sent me in an unforeseen direction that changed everything around me, like when I won the lottery. I’m just kidding. But it does hold true when I met my wife. See, everybody, I did win the lottery.

So as years went by, one of my favorite hobbies was reading in the morning before the workday began. I found myself repeatedly drawn to reading. It was an escape from the pressure of the real world. There was no Internet back then, guys, and the news was just so dark all the time, still is, plus you only had three channels on TV. In response, I developed an actual keen interest in reading. This is actually funny because in school I could not read. I was dyslexic and put in remedial reading. I sat in a tiny little room off the library on the third floor of St. Anthony’s of Padua School, being tutored by so-called loving nuns. My ass. Those rubber bands were wrapped way too tight. I said rubber bands because bitches sounds bad.

As I really think about it, looking back now, Mr. Heffner, my eighth-grade English teacher, probably instilled in me an open mind about reading along with the love of playing chess, which I love to this day. What a great game. My first book was The Call of the Wild, and my second was the Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hide. A slew of other books to were read throughout my early life. Then I found J. R. R. Tolkien—game changer. I read all his works five or six times each. The world he created in his mind then on paper was astounding. He even wrote all the religions and histories, events, and prophecies. Everything was clear-cut and precise. You had good guys and bad guys. Pick a team and root them on. Not so easy in the real world. The lines are much more blurred than that. The one book that got me started on wondering about what I referred to as God was The Silmarillion. That captured my imagination. This book used sound as the instrument of delivery in creation. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

By this time, I was in my twenties. Quickly I zoned in on religion. I found all the dogma wildly imaginative better than any fiction. Remember, I just read J. R. R. Tolkien. I thought that was fantasy gone wild. Not even close. Religion is off the hook. These ideas are fantasy on steroids. Just take a gander at the Mahābhārata, a Sanskrit epic of the Hindu scripture, and you will be surprised. For that matter, the Old Testament, the first five books also known as the Torah. Then try the Bardo Thodol, or the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Let’s go to the other side of the planet and read the Popol Vuh, the sacred writings of the Mayans. Go to the birthplace of the world, and look at the pyramid texts. Next would be Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform writings of the Sumerians. That is some history there. They explain we were created as a slave race for lazy aliens, who needed gold to save their home planet. They found Earth full of gold, started mining, then got tired of mining for gold. When they could not find any more easy gold to pick up and had to start digging, they got cranky real fast. This prompted them to create us out of whatever apelike ancestor they found on earth. By mixing their blood with ours, they created us. Our job was to do the hard labor while they reaped all the rewards while not knowing the difference. I tell you what, guys, of all the reading of history and religion in my life, that last sentence sounds a lot like us. You know, made in God’s image and all that. I’m just saying.

Then when you look at an overview of all beliefs in history, you’ve got talking snakes, snakes from the stars, alien air battles, underground worlds, delectable fruit that gives you knowledge, paths to follow after you die to get to God, hell, even magic rings. Not to forget magic carpets and killer life spans. What else do you want? Resurrection? Got that too! Ships to take the dead to the stars, then there are visions that are extreme, lots and lots of visions. In all history, you have bloodbaths of war. Slash and burn was invented in the Torah. Kill them all and all they possess, even the ground and the water. Not to get gory, but when I said, Kill them all, I meant young, old, men, women, sick, firstborn of anything, babies. Get the picture? What level of brutality has your mind accepted to be able to follow such orders? Belief in your God? And if the notions of high-level slash and burn is more your style, there is nuclear fallout caused by the alien space battles. The gods! Can’t live with them, can’t live without them. Beat that, fiction! All this and more actually is written for you to read and believe in. Give it a try. I did.

By the way, if you ask any believer in any of the beliefs that I have mentioned above, they have some cockamamie reason why their God had a good reason to enact wars, have slaves be vicious like this; it’s righteous and perfect. And I did say slaves. Why, you might ask, does God have slaves? I don’t know. Not my God! But the gods of history do. A little sidenote, if any of the above mentioned is true, where are all these gods, their sacred items that were paraded around for the whole world to see and fear? Oh yeah, they all vanished, all of them; not one item remains or any evidence at all to be seen. That is a little convenient. I mean, from everywhere throughout time and space, just think about that.

If I spun a tale for you of all these wonderful magic items and supreme magical beings and great adventures and epic wins then turned around and said, They all vanished, and I know not where, but I do have this strict doctrine I want you to follow, I doubt I would be surrounded by followers, maybe flowers and high doses of Thorazine. How could every magic ring, magic hammer, flying carpet, sword, Ark of the Covenant, top stone of the Great Pyramid, true cross, varmanas, tridents, sun disks, emerald tablets, sacred mirrors, doorways, and the best known—the Holy Grail—how can everything, all of it, be gone? Absolutely nothing survived. Better yet, none of these gods talk to anyone anymore. No public appearances. Nothing. No get-up-and-walk miracles. Nada. A believer’s answer to you will be, it is a matter of faith. My response to that is, we needed that kind of help then, but not now? Do they listen to the news? We need that help now more than ever or just as much as then. It is unimaginable to believe no one saw a need to care for at least just one of these sacred items and keep it safe. Or people destroyed them all.

How about not one god stayed or lived? Hard to believe nothing made it. If it is a matter of faith now, why wasn’t it a matter of faith then? Then we have got the religions that say, We have these great objects of veneration hidden in a safe place. But you can’t view or touch them in any way. You simply are not worthy, and they are sacred. Well, I have a genie in a bottle then, and you can’t see her either.

While reading all this, trying to get a grip on the divine, I did what I believe almost all of you did. I got up went to work. In my case, I have always worked for myself. Stress, stress, stress! Then I came home, ate, then bullshitted around for a couple of hours, went to bed. I did this every day all day seven days a week for years. My only daily reprieve, believe it or not, was reading. As years went by, I read the major works of any religion or spiritual writing I could find, no matter what specific topic or subdivision of the religion. This took me to every corner of the known world and through all of time, all the way till the present. Plus, I am still at it, reading every piece of the pie.

There is a common thread, by the way, in all the writings: eternity. In between bouts of reading, that which was supposed to make me wealthy became my life. I worked without fail for half my life—all this in the pursuit of money because money makes the world go around. Money was power, and power was status. Status brought recognition. Recognition brings demand turns to fame. Fame becomes ego. Ego opens the door to mammon. Why stop now? Well, because it was the direct opposite of what I am supposed to be learning. All that reading, and apparently nothing went in.

I did use my God-given gifts to the hilt, but what did I really gain? Well, a lot of fancy toys: cars, bikes, many homes—more than one man needs, and I had to keep all that shit up—maintenance, insurance. Only thing I didn’t have was time to play. On the good side, I really enjoy my gifts and absolutely expanded what God gave me in the first place. I do believe God would like that much of it. As for my behavior and undue desires, I don’t believe so. I pay for these errors till this day and will forevermore till I make reparation and restore balance. Hooray!

Early on, I had no idea what mammon was. I happily thought I was moving up the food chain, expanding my domain, giving my children a better life than I started with. But at some point, it becomes priority, some sort of competition. I started buying into my own hype, like I was granted a special honor or privilege as an acknowledgment of merit. I used that persona to exercise a series of actions that ends with you opening the door for me because I was special. I referred to this personality as Iron Man! Everybody who knows me has heard me say that a million times at least, if not more.

My one daughter holds an exceptionally high-level disdain for this persona in general. I talked the talk, but I also walked the walk; that is what killed them the most. Secretly, all wanted Iron Man to fall. No one seemed to care for him; but Iron Man results—that’s another matter. The only person who could ever keep up with me is Donna. She knows all my inner thoughts. Plus, the added bonus: She can outwork or live any man I know. The only reason my life worked is because we did it together 24-7. That means all the time together, boys and girls. We shared epic runs throughout our time together.

Now getting back to mammon. Mammon is a total dick move, the total disregard of anything but false devotion to greed or wealth. You hold these things to the point of adoration they are venerated to the degree of worship. When this happens, you will hurt all around you to attain them. That is a problem. All of us have felt this at some point in life on any level you wish to admit just for now. You wanted something in life then took it despite who got hurt. The complications of this way of acting, better yet, thinking, is you actually miss out on the very essence of the life you need. There is a whole lot of pushing forward, collecting stuff, but not enough time to enjoy any of it. On vacations, all you do is worry if everything at business is going as planned without you. Then what kind of mess will there be to clean up when you are back? Life is not even the point anymore. And that can become a shitstorm fast. You never really get anywhere because all your time and energy is consumed with feeding your manufactured needs instead of your quality of life.

I now believe less is more. In keeping it simple, you have more time for the small things that make life enjoyable. We cannot take anything in this life with us any further than death. But nonetheless, all the things I have spoken of so far only describe the physical aspect of existence. Most of us live this melodramatic lifestyle, and the more toys the better. Not true, just a big pain in the ass. Do have some toys, the ones you really like or will actually use, not collect? Trophies just collect dust. Soon enough you will be dust too. Don’t have more than you need. Nothing else does.

The awareness I am trying to figure out is bigger than that. I want to know what makes it all tick. How did it start ticking in the first place? Why do we use the word tick when what we really mean is, how does this work? Point being, have we mastered any major poignant or powerful life-enhancing notions? Have you ever wondered why you are here? Now is here, existence.