Anyone who has seen the film, "The Matrix," understands "Matrix Philosophy." Do you choose the red pill, which will answer "The Question." Or, do you choose the blue pill which allows life to simply carry on as before? To paraphrase the words of Morphe us from the film, ". . . All I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more. "And what is the truth? It encompasses the meaning and the purpose of life and embraces an understanding of a greater reality. One would think that everyone would want to know Truth. But it is not quite so simple. We can't all quite handle Truth. But that's life! I have always had a great intellectual curiosity about Man and his universe. The big questions of the meaning and purpose of life have always been with me in some subliminal manner. But, the easier questions of life and death seemed more within my grasp. Perhaps, that is part of the reason I became a physician. So, over many years, I have become very well acquainted with both the mode of entry to and exit from this life. When it came to religious dogma and faith in a higher power, I completely recoiled in disbelief. To choose belief was not a choice I could make. Religions all seemed so disconnected to any truth I could imagine. Unless science could prove the existence of God, it was all silly nonsense: fairy tales for young and old of feeble minds. Prejudice was cloaked in religious garb, dividing, persecuting, and killing people, all in the name of God. What kind of God would allow it? That was all I needed to know about religion. I removed myself from such idiocy. But life had other things in store for me . . .

a Book of LIFE

Welcome to a Greater RealityBy Howard Lawrence Scheiner

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 Howard Lawrence Scheiner, MD/AAHIVS
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4490-0806-2

Contents

Acknowledgments................................................vDedication.....................................................ixPreface........................................................xvPrologue.......................................................xixChapter 1 In The Beginning.....................................1Chapter 2 A Whirlwind Of Passion...............................9Chapter 3 Transformative Moments...............................13Chapter 4 A Magical Journey....................................17Chapter 5 Finding My Heart.....................................23Chapter 6 At The Speed Of Time.................................29Quantum Leap...................................................37The School of Life.............................................43Epilogue Welcome to a Greater Reality ........................49An Angels' Song................................................57About the Author...............................................59

Chapter One

IN THE BEGINNING

It was a cold February night in 1994. Brent, my long-term lover, lay dying in his bed. There was a high snow outside his window, where bitter wintry air was blowing up a tempest, as if to set the stage for what was to come. In the stillness of his room, it was warm and intimate. The only sounds were our voices.

I was too close to it all. I was his doctor as well as his lover. His faith and his trust in me had been his lifeline. I had no choice in that. Whether I felt burdened or not, I had long ago had vowed never to abandon him or betray his trust. So, when I made the diagnosis of AIDS for Brent's long apparent illness, I railed against the fates and cursed the God I refused to believe in.

I became an HIV specialist, treating and caring for Brent, along with many other friends. His pain became my pain, his suffering became my suffering, and his death became my rebirth. I had no choice and in the end, I had no power. I could not save him.

Brent had always enjoyed that special charisma that would draw all eyes towards him. Strangers always imagined they knew him from somewhere. With his charming smile, larger-than-life personality, and wonderful heart, he was indeed beloved. He was "good" his entire life. He gave money to the homeless. He loved animals. His only enemy, fate was most cruel. He asked me, "Why, for the love of God, did this happen to me? All my hope and belief in the future ... It was only an illusion." I had no answer to offer back.

And so, this extraordinary and special young man, facing his own mortality so prematurely in a world transformed by AIDS, told me about belief. He knew he was to die that night. Talking about the possibility of an afterlife, he said he believed the next life would be better than this one. And I asked "Why?" What made him sure? His answer was simply because he chose to. Since belief was his choice, he would believe in something that made him happy. And a greater reality than the life we knew, with bliss yet to come, gave him comfort and brought him strength. Between hysterical sobs, I begged him to give me a sign if at all possible, any sign that he was right, that there was more to life beyond death. He nodded his assent. Then he said, "Someday, you'll meet a man again, who will give you his heart. I want you to give him this ring as a gift from me, a remembrance from the happiest days of my life." He took the ring from his finger and placed it in my hand. And I said, "There will never be another."

As death robbed him of his life, I helplessly watched his body convulse through all its fits and starts. Then, when the death rattle heralded the inevitable conclusion of his struggle, he took his very last gulp of air.

And in my arms, he died. In the quiet of that room, I held him, caressed him and kissed him, for one final moment. I imagined I could feel his soul depart, as his body became cold and lifeless. I screamed to the heavens, a horrific, blood-curdling noise, of anguish and pain. And then, I cried my heart out, until my tear ducts ran dry.

The next morning, I was standing in the shower, when suddenly, the water that was hitting my back seemed to stop. I turned around and saw the showerhead spinning clockwise with the inner plastic piece spinning counter-clockwise. Interrupting my sorrow, I instinctively screamed out, "Brent, is that my sign!?" That might have been the very first time I experienced profound joy and sadness all at once. My heart leapt for joy as my mind knew only sorrow. I reached up to stop the spinning, which it did as soon as I grabbed the showerhead. Having calmed myself, my rational brain took over and determined it was a problem with water pressure, or something like that. I then tried to reproduce my miracle by playing with the showerhead for the next half-hour, with no success. I was unable to recreate that magical moment-the fleeting feeling that there was something more beyond death. Although such an event had not happened before, and has not since in the twenty years I lived there, or anywhere else for that matter, I still did not quite embrace the mini-miracle of the spinning showerhead until a decade later.

Now with anything that comes into our lives from a greater reality, there is a natural tendency of the mind to try to explain, in the context of what we understand, the things that we have glimpsed. Find a "natural," "scientific," "reasonable" explanation, says the mind! Otherwise, you must ignore such an occurrence or people will view you and your views with suspicion. Moreover, these experiences with greater reality are topics that must be avoided in normal social situations for fear of abject ridicule. For most of us, even beyond the fear of rejection and humiliation, we are simply ill-prepared to deal with the "big picture" issues of life-the meaning and purpose, and the mode of entry and exit from it.

Brent's passing was my second close encounter with death. Although as a doctor, I had seen death many times before, it was never this up-close and personal. With Brent, it smacked me in the face with a vague familiarity, for which I was unprepared. That familiarity was born of my first close, personal encounter with death. It was intense and life-altering and different. It was that of my grandmother, when I was fifteen years old. The intimacy and intensity, while no less profound, did not enter my home as that frontal assault of Brent's illness and death. Her illness blindsided me and her suffering affected me greatly. She had cancer of the gallbladder, which caused her great pain. I watched as this vibrant woman wasted away, turning yellow and emaciated as death approached. At our last supper with her and our family, I insisted that we discuss the truth that she already knew. Everyone else tried to hide it from her, offering her pabulum instead. And then she told the assembled that I indeed did speak for her. She wanted a connection of truth with her loved ones and her condition. That was the last time I saw her alive.

Part of the human condition for anyone with the mental capacities to look beyond themselves and this life is, at some point, to confront personal mortality. In so doing, questions of fate, God, life's purpose, good and evil, the inevitability of death, and what lies beyond will ensnare and entangle every intellect. My grandmother's cancer and subsequent death was that moment for me.

While these may not be topics that fascinate everyone, they eventually will force themselves into every mind and hold each captive for some variable period of time. They will demand full attention and attention will be paid.

Whether it is the loss of loved ones, serious illness, some inexplicable cruelty, or one's own impending death, the mind will grapple with all these thoughts.

That final evening together, undoubtedly played a significant part in my decision to become a physician. I would offer comfort and understanding to those who suffer and do battle with illness and death.

So I became a physician-a noble profession. I became a specialist in internal medicine, the closest thing to a "healer" that I could envision. But then came drastic changes in health delivery, HMOs and managed care, malpractice suits, and insurance woes. My successful life was becoming much more difficult. And the periods of unhappiness that would come my way only multiplied as the stresses of the private practice of medicine increased.

I went into the restaurant business with a close friend to find the money, happiness, and success that was slipping away from my life as a doctor. Our restaurant was on Columbus Avenue, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a block from Central Park. We were immensely successful right from the start. The line to enter would wind around the block, down to the Park. Wearing two hats, I was still a doctor by day, but a restaurateur by night. It was while wearing that evening hat that I met Brent, just as the plague of my generation was showing its face to the world. He was the actor, singer, dancer, who came to work as a waiter in our restaurant, and all the while stole my heart. And so, it began. Enamored as we would become, it was only a matter of time until we would share our love and our lives under the same roof.

Then one night, the phone rang. There had been a fire at the restaurant. Brent and I raced up there. We walked through the charred ruins of my beautiful fifteen minutes of fame in numbed disbelief. It was gone. I lost all my money as I wound up in court with my friend/ business partner as adversary. And I discovered that friends, if you do not know them well and sometimes even if you do, might just have a very different view of friendship. Control, the scent of money, and rights to the future potential of our company name were the motives for the mutiny on the "ship of friend." The fire had been deliberately set. The Fire Marshall said it was an inside job. Betrayal of trust is an absolute minefield to cross. Trying to make sense of it is a story unto itself. Life continued to unravel.

Brent would die in just ten short years from the time we met.

Unbearable sorrow invaded my unhappy home. Someone changed my blueprint as a scourge hit the world. Fragments of thought swirled in my head as confusion reigned. Successful life? Fleeting moments of happiness in times of despair. A new reality to life! God? That would be farcical.

I then developed a series of failed relationships with good people, whose dreams simply and eventually collided with mine. In the midst of them all was one, whose misdirected passions became abusive. And so I lay on the floor of the hallway of our building, bleeding from the arm he had ripped with his teeth as I saved my dog from his hands encircling her neck. As he threatened to kill her, a voice in my head said, "This is not my life." The poodle, Coco, was saved. He went to jail.

Thanks to laws designed to protect all parties, as he then falsely claimed abuse, I also found myself in jail. This simply could not be my life. Where was that lovely blueprint I once had? Yet, that awful experience would be only the first of two such temporary moments of insanity in the reality of my life.

But first, Brent's prediction would come true. As the embers of love were rekindled into a roaring inferno, Brent's ring fulfilled its new purpose, as a gift of remembrance and love.

Chapter Two

A WHIRLWIND OF PASSION

I fell in love with a certain painting, at the same moment, with the same feelings and the same understanding as Michael, as our thoughts magically intertwined in a Parisian gallery.

I look at that picture and it reminds me of why we were bound to one another in that moment. In the painting, two simians were traveling together. The younger held on the shoulder of the older while playfully grabbing his tail. The "slightly older" ape shows a gentle wisdom and the younger chimp an impish delight. They are bound not only by physical closeness but a simian understanding and delight in life. The vivid colors gave it energy, a force that jumps off the canvas and says That's Love.

We had an innate understanding of one another. There were many similarities in our life situations, our outlooks, and in the structure of our friendships. We also had great harmony. We clicked. Michael got me. I got him. It was amazing to me. The intuitive understanding that we shared convinced me that we were soul-mates. When he took me on a birthday trip to Paris, I was overwhelmed by his largess. And I was charmed. And I fell head over heels in love. It was the first time I felt love in that way-swept off my feet in a whirlwind of passion, in the most romantic city in the world. I felt so very special; I felt so lucky to be loved so very much. I believed it to be "true love," as if any love might not be true. It seemed to echo a truism-you only know it when you know it.

The words in songs about love seemed to have new meaning for me. Poems about love now seemed to resonate with a newfound understanding. I gave him the ring which I had treasured most dearly, closely held in my heart, and during the previous ten years, safely kept in my home. He accepted it and much like Cinderella's glass slipper, it was a perfect fit. Happiness was assured. We would spend our lives together, forever!

But life had other things in store for me.

Chapter Three

TRANSFORMATIVE MOMENTS

The second moment of temporary insanity in the reality of my life was being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, dancing and chatting with the wrong person, on the wrong dance floor. As he was targeted and then arrested, I was swept along, leading to a twenty-four hour stay in a hell hole called "The Tombs" in lower Manhattan. This notorious place, a freezing cold, rat-infested jail, is properly known as the Manhattan Detention Complex. There was nothing to eat. The peanut butter sandwich they provided was inedible. It was two hard pieces of bread, with the thinnest imaginable daub of stale peanut butter. I took one bite and threw it away. I was unable or unwilling to use the toilet facility. Strategically placed off-center in the room, there sat a stainless steel toilet without seat. It was open to public view and covered with a splatter of excrement. Toilet paper required delicate negotiations with the jailhouse guards. They seemed willing to provide a single sheet or two, if you were willing to submit to a certain amount of verbal abuse. It was there in that hell-hole, surrounded by some twenty to thirty of the most potentially violent criminals rounded up that night, that I hit rock bottom. I wrapped my arms around myself in an attempt to keep the cold at bay, as I rocked back and forth in childlike fashion. My entire life flashed before me, as I imagined it might at the moment of death. I imagined losing everything, my home, friends, family, and profession. Was this the successful life I was promised? Who made that promise anyway? Happiness? I could not remember that word. Ah, despair. That's the word.

But thankfully, there was an angel on my shoulder. After several months of court appearances, worry, and fear, all charges were dismissed. "Hallelujah," cried out Michael as we left the courtroom. And while not a national holiday, I celebrate yearly as for no other; Hallelujah Day it was-October thirteenth.

I was able to resume my life, grateful for all that I have, and happy just to be alive. I had been blindsided by a series of life-altering events. Totally unexpected, completely unbelievable, transformative moments. The hard, cold facts of life appeared at my door. Uninvited, they forced their way in. No one warned me that my happy, successful life, my blueprint of reality, and my role in it could be so easily altered without my consent.

So, while sitting in "The Tombs," disbelieving the moment I found myself in, another moment played itself over and over in my head. With so much "alone" time at my disposal, I could not help but wonder about life, death, meaning, purpose, and God. And so from the recesses of my mind I recalled another happier time, one that I had long denied to myself. Denied because it took my reality and turned it upside down and inside out. But then again, that was where I found myself anyway.

And this is where my story really begins. Once upon a (no)time ...

Chapter Four

A MAGICAL JOURNEY

It happened strangely enough on a dance floor called Arabian Nights, on the outskirts of Disney World. Normally, this is a huge equestrian facility. But, for three nights a year, it is transformed into a colossal dance floor. A wood floor is laid, state-of-the-art equipment is brought in, and thousands come to revel in the magic of the music and the space. The official name of these after-parties is Magic Journeys. There I was, alone in my moment, sharing it with Michael, and at the same time sharing it with thousands upon thousands of others in moments of their own.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from a Book of LIFEby Howard Lawrence Scheiner Copyright © 2009 by Howard Lawrence Scheiner, MD/AAHIVS. Excerpted by permission.
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