Off On Our Own - Ted Carns

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walked in and said, “Wow – this reminds me of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory!” Go figure.

      I don’t experience any of that cool stuff. I’m just repeating what I’ve heard with my own ears and seen with my own eyes. I’m making no claims. I mean, how could I or why should I? That’s a sure path to insanity.

       The Library

      People who come here eventually discover the library. It didn’t start out to be a library, it just kind of evolved. I built a room onto the side of my woodshed. It had no windows. I called it “my dark room.” In one corner I had a soft couch-like little place with some pillows and blankets. That’s where I’d go when I’d hit a low point and needed to recalibrate. I’d wrap up in blankets like a caterpillar in a cocoon and let myself work through the anguish. After that was over I’d walk back out glowing and at peace because I just came out of a reality check. It’s that kind of place.

      Once, a group of very troubled kids was brought up by their counselors. There was a severely autistic boy named Joey. He got drawn to my dark corner like tin to a magnet. No words, bribes or coaxing could get him to leave that place. They had to drag him out of there kicking and screaming and he kept on kicking and screaming to get back in for quite a time.

      I’ve since installed a big skylight in that room and now it’s the library – four walls filled to overflowing, desk heaped, and little extraneous stacks all over the place. I’ve told people it’s my Internet connection. The big north wall has the most shelves and they’re filled with spiritual texts of all religions and the works of their saints. The east and the south walls are the how-to, cooking, gardening and nature section. The west wall is everything else. There are a few classics, a big bunch of philosophy, a few college texts, a couple of novels and a nice section of children’s books.

      The religion section covers all bases, as does the nature section. Hell, I even have a book on identifying all the birds in Great Britain. But the how-to is the most impressive. I’d be surprised if the technical info on any subject relevant to living an essential lifestyle isn’t there somewhere. The only trouble is you can’t Google it. You gotta get your hands dirty and explore the shelves to get what you’re looking for.

      Later in the book I talk about our garden and how important my topsoil is to me. I hauled it in, and if I leave I’ll haul it out. I think I can say the same about the library. As vividly as I remember the first little tiny garden Kathy and I planted – just a few square feet – I also remember the day I heard a story about the building of a personal library. I can remember the first few books I collected and where they sat, to the left of the fireplace on top of an old cabinet. That was about 34 years ago.

      Between three and four thousand people have come up here to visit, alone or with a tour, from maybe 30 countries, but I’m not keeping count. I lent a doctor my hardback “Writings of Hippocrates,” and later tried to figure out who I lent it to. I looked through the guest book and found almost forty doctors.

      The amazing thing is that all of this has evolved by word of mouth. Friends bring friends who in turn become friends and bring more people and they become friends. It’s like a Facebook page that both is and is not. Kathy and I have such an open door policy that our doors don’t even lock. It got a bit much one hot Sunday afternoon when we had 18 unannounced visitors and all I wanted to do was skinny dip in our little pool. Not that it wasn’t nice to see everyone, but that sweltering heat . . .

       Time

      Now that we have email, a cell phone and the fact you’re reading this book, we might have to change the open door policy a bit. If interest should happen to surge we may have to start scheduling some things so we can have our share of quiet time and still be welcoming hosts. I have noticed a decline in the drop by’s, but I don’t think it’s because we’re losing friends.

      I think it’s what the Hopi elders predicted of the last days. They said we’re going to see two distinct and profound changes. Change #1 is that it’s going to get really hot, and #2 is that time will accelerate. It will be like “Oh my God, it’s Friday again!” That happens when you get older, but the elders said this will be different – everybody will experience it.

      I wondered and pondered just how that could happen. Then I realized, yes, time really is relative just as Einstein said, and we each can choose between two distinct approaches to time. We can either be obsessed with efficiency and saving time, or . . . we can kick back, relax and take time, or just simply make time. Time doesn’t expand in the obsession to save it – it does the opposite: It shrinks. Time may be money, but money has wings, and like time it flies away as fast as it can. Life is where time is. Its fullness is in taking time and making time. Life actually disappears when all you want to do is strive for quickness and efficiency. Saving time may actually be even killing time. How ironic can you get? The effort to save it makes you lose it. Time-saving efficiency gets you to your destination quicker, but that’s what makes time accelerate.

      On reflection, I can remember sitting with artists, actors, actresses, activists, acupuncturists, anarchists, autistic children, professional athletes and total assholes; Ayurvedic, homeopathic and naturopathic healers, chiropractors, surgeons, pediatricians, dentists and general practitioners. I’ve spoken with victims of cancer and HIV who were in their last days among the living.

      I’ve been woken up at 3 am to be told, “I spent all my children’s college savings on cocaine. What the hell am I going to do?” I’ve chatted with psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts and philosophers; child therapists and social workers; teachers, lawyers, outlaws, juvenile delinquents and law enforcement officers; musicians, poets and an opera singer who sang for the Pope; Catholic priests, Zen Buddhist priests, Jehovah’s Witnesses and preachers of most every Christian faith, members of every race, creed and religion, and a man who knew Al Capone when he was a kid.

      I’ve had coffee with saintly persons and embodiments of apparent evil, and sometimes both at once. I saw a guy who was an undercover narcotic agent for 25 years sit with a confessed heavy bud smoker like best friends. I remember the narc said something like, “Nobody’s on duty up here.” I’ve sat with servants, masters, seekers of Truth and compulsive liars. Visitors from all over the world have walked through The Stone Camp’s unlocked doors. And I still don’t know how most of them even found the place.

       Unembellished Truths

      There are a bunch of spiritual books on the market that I call embellished truths. They’re like fictional spiritual wonder stories. Some authors even say right out front their work is fictional, but people still want to make religions out of them. I watch in amazement as cult followings develop around these well-worded fantasies. People have asked me if I’d had the Seventh Insight they read about. I want to say “Yeah, with my guru Mickey Mouse.”

      I will be so bold as to say that this book is quite the opposite. I feel the need to un-embellish what really goes on here. Other realms of experience and manifestation that are often fabricated and sensationalized actually do occur here, but I just don’t talk about them because it’s way too personal. Quite a bit of what really goes on here is unbelievable.

      Here’s one example that rests just this side of the untold experience border:

      Sorry guys, but no one will ever convince me that “trophy hunting” is anything more than a passing crude and arrogant abomination. I was obsessing about it one time and was suddenly hit on the head by the hammer of my own moth and butterfly collection. It represented years of collecting and I actually went flush at the thought of what a hypocrite I was.

      I took the collection of butterflies down from the wall, dug a small grave under the pines and gave them a proper burial. Then I begged God to forgive me for judging people. I kept the cecropia and luna moth specimens just a little while longer so I could admire them. I had a real hard time digging their grave because they were so big, beautiful and rare and because I’d never actually seen one up here

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