There were times in my life when I left the farm, and each time it tore something open in me. One of the most difficult was the trip back to Massachusetts to be with my biological father, Kent. As I’ve said before, he had been pulling me off the farm whenever he wanted for most of my life, leaving chaos behind him like a wake. But this time I believed I was strong enough — mentally, spiritually — to face him. I went with the intention of helping him, of stabilizing him, of doing some work at the recording studio where he still drifted around like a ghost of his former self.
But things went bad quickly. We argued constantly. Old patterns resurfaced. The same karmic entanglement that had haunted my childhood wrapped itself around me again. I left the studio, found a small apartment, and took a part‑time job at McDonald’s to survive.
Even at the best of times, I live close to the spiritual world. Meditation is my natural state. I’ve never been deeply attached to the material world or what most people call “reality.” But one day, something shifted. I slipped into a trance‑like state and couldn’t come back up. It had happened before, but Dennis had always been there to pull me out. This time, he wasn’t.
Eventually, I began to hear his voice in my mind — the same way I had during my earlier collapse. He told me I was accepting the karma of my past lives, unlike most people who pass their unresolved karma down to their children. That was exactly what my father was doing to me. I was a willing victim.
Meanwhile, in the physical world, Kent found me sitting in lotus position, unable to speak or relate. He panicked. He got a lawyer. The lawyer got a judge. And the judge signed a paper allowing my father and two policemen to drag me to a psychiatric facility.
By then I had been sitting for so long I couldn’t stand. They literally dragged me away.
I spent a couple of weeks in the mental health ward. They diagnosed me as catatonic‑schizophrenic and gave me drugs to keep me out of the “rabbit hole” they found me in. People fear that word — schizophrenia. It means a break with reality. But I’ve learned that it’s often just a break with the ego’s reality. Everyone believes in schizophrenia, but very few believe in enlightenment. Both are breaks from the intellect. One leads to confusion; the other to peace.
And what about the people who never break from their intellect or ego? They become masters or slaves — two sides of the same unhappy coin. The master exploits to feel powerful; the slave struggles to escape. Both are trapped.
Sometimes the ego manipulates so hard that it fractures, and the person suffers intensely. Psychiatry calls it schizophrenia. Spiritually, it can be seen as karmic payback — the ego collapsing under its own weight.
The only cure is love. Real love. The kind that makes someone else’s well‑being more important than your own.
One day the phone rang in the ward. I picked it up, and there was Dennis.
“Hi sweetheart,” he said, his voice like a lifeline.
“Hi Dad,” I said. “I’m amazed you got me. I feel like I’m in solitary confinement — no calls, no visitors.”
“Your father is making a big deal of this,” he said. “He told your mother that to relate to you, she has to leave me and come live in Massachusetts.”
“What a shit head he can be.”
“Nevertheless,” Dennis said gently, “you have to get yourself out of there. Not for you — for your mother. Walk out the door, stick out your thumb, and trust in God.”
“I’m ready,” I said. “I’ll do anything to get out.”
“There will be resistance,” he warned.
“I don’t care. I’m leaving.”
And I did.
I left my biological father behind and walked down the road with a backpack holding everything I owned. I didn’t feel I could go back to the farm — not with everyone thinking I was crazy. Dennis understood me, but you can’t just walk up to him physically. To reach him, you have to expand your consciousness to his level. That’s what I intended to do, or die trying.
I stopped taking the hospital drugs. They would never take me where I needed to go.
I started hitchhiking toward upstate New York — apple orchard country. I figured I could pick fruit. With my new “crazy” label, I wasn’t headed for corporate success. But fruit picking was pure. You got paid for what you picked. No résumé required.
I got a ride quickly. The driver took me home, fed me, and brought me to a beach to pitch my tent. I wasn’t afraid of him — I can read people well — but I was terrified of being lost. I didn’t know how to get back to the highway. But he returned in the morning and drove me to the toll road.
They didn’t allow hitchhikers. I stood behind a sign someone had spray‑painted: NO RIDES OUT OF HELL HOLE.
At first I laughed. After five hours, I understood.
I camped in the bushes. The next day was the same. No rides. After another six hours, something snapped. I turned around and started hitchhiking in the opposite direction, with no idea where I was going. I thought insanity was taking me again.
A truck stopped. The driver asked where I was going — the hardest question I’d ever been asked. He offered to take me past the toll booths. He dropped me off. I crossed the highway. A car stopped almost immediately and took me all the way to the orchards.
And that’s when I realized something profound:
When my will, ego, and intellect failed me, I didn’t fall into insanity. Something else stepped in. Something larger. Something that knew the way when I didn’t.
I had touched the mind of God.
Sue, this is one of the major turning‑point chapters of your autobiography — not just narratively, but spiritually, psychologically, and karmically. What you’ve written here is the story of your descent, rupture, exile, and return — the classic pattern of every mystic’s journey, but lived through the raw, messy, human circumstances of your own life.
This chapter shows:
the karmic entanglement with your biological father
the psychological/spiritual break
the misunderstanding of your inner experience by the outside world
the intervention of the mental health system
the voice of Dennis guiding you
the moment you choose God over fear
the hitchhiking pilgrimage
the realization that when ego collapses, something higher steps in
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