My first Awakening Moment.

To un-educate myself from all forms of former education in this life is primarily what I have been doing as one who is looking for answers in life albeit, spiritual or material/physical realm. What i have been educated with from my early year in school and at home has been mostly a very restrictive and conditioning form of mind controlling such that i was mostly afraid to confront my fears and doubts. I was mostly loaded with information that made me subservient to my so called superiors, to follow orders and not free to transcend beyond the norm. It was like living in the matrix or someone else's making and i had very little to say for myself; either follow of be punished. I chose to break away from this norm at a very early years of my young adult life by leaving my restricted environment and headed for the United States. In the US after having gone through my initial trials and tribulations, i broke free from yet another form of conscription, that of being a family man when I was hardly ready to bear the role especially in a country where i had to battle for my own identity as a colored foreigner in a 'Red neck' neighborhood.
After working for three and half years in the meat packing plants of Wisconsin, I told myself that enough was enough and I was not cut to become like the cattle that i was butchering day in day out in the cold Wisconsin winters. It was by divine miracle that i was offered to study at the University of Wisconsin in Green Bay where i spent five years of my life self discovering. it was the best or the worse times of my life but I learned what it takes to survive on my own in someone else's backyard. I learned what my mind was capable of when allowed free reign and how it can not only get myself to where i wanted to be but also put me where i should not have been in terms of relationships and self preservation. I not only survived the cold Wisconsin weather but i also freed myself from self bondage. it was in green bay that i truly had my first epiphany, my awakening to who i I am.
I remember sitting in front of the television one afternoon watching Giligan's Island sometime in 1973 and it was fall with the trees leafless and the skies grey outside the bay window of my mother in law's house. I was clad in my 'sarong' and a white T-Shirt because it was very warm in the house thanks to my thoughtful mother in law who turned the heat on high so his Malaysian son in law would not freeze his buns. My wife and son and i had just arrived from Malaysia after a very long and tedious flight and were quarantined for being infected by shillelagh worm on the flight , so said the doctors. No one leaves the house including my sister in law until we were all cleared of the infection. It was like being trapped in a cabin and for me it was the worse agony as my four month old son was constantly in pain and screaming. I had my emotional breakdown which almost cost my son's life and mine at one point, as things got worse.
As i sat there in front of the TV I looked from the corner of my eyes out of the window and noticed that large cotton balls were floating down from the silent grey sky and the contrast was so drastic that i felt the world around had gone silent including the TV that was a few feet away from me. I was stunned by the phenomena and rose form my seat and dashed out of the house through the backdoor and as i passed the kitchen i could barely hear my wife screaming after me something and wham! i was outside. I was on the lawn and with my arms out stretched and my head looking up and tongue sticking out; I was trying to catch the snow flakes in my mouth; my first snow. I came to when i heard my mother in law screaming at me to get my butt inside before i freeze them. Then I realized how ridiculous i must have looked twirling like a dervish out there in the cold winter day in my 'skirt' or sarong and T'shirt with nothing else on. My feet were the first to send the message to my brain to get out of the cold and I dashed back into the house and as i was climbing the small steps into the kitchen a voice in my head started talking to me in Bahasa Malaysia or Malay. "You are now in a foreign land where no one really knows you and you hardly know anyone. You have the choice to become who you wish to be, a coward or a hero, a shy and frightened soul or one who is free from fears and doubts and no one can tell the difference; your choice now! "tepok dada, tanya selera", beat your chest (like the gorillas do) and go for the gusto! I did.
This was how my life began in the United States where i lived my life for 21 years and this was my first awakening experience that had carried me through thick and thin; the rest was history. A very close friend once said to me, "Sam, you are more of an American than an American!" I spent eight years in Wisconsin, two years in the Bering Sea off Alaska, a year in the Washington State area and and ten years in the San Francisco Bay Area. I lived life i can safely say, to the fullest, from being a decadent college student to a yard superintendent in a major ship and environmental company in the SF Bay Area. From living in the home of a millionaire employer and celebrating my 40th. birthday at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown SF to becoming a homeless on Haight and Ashbury. I was married twice to two Americans and had a child that i did know of by a Swiss. I almost committed myself to becoming a Zen monk and an alcoholic with a drug addiction problem; it was the best and the worse of times since i 'beat my chest and screamed within me that I can do what I will to do! one cold winter day in Green Bay Wisconsin.