Called for Jury Duty

We walk through life pretending that our path is fairly normal and predictable until we’re caught up short, or perhaps we stumble into a situation that unexpectedly catches us off guard and something opens up that changes our perspective. Some might even call this a blessing.

I was called for jury duty, and early one Spring morning, I dutifully reported to San Francisco’s Hall of Justice. It is a nondescript building, really just a plain block of grey-white marble, filled with an odd assortment of people, police, people on their way to work paying traffic fines, lawyers in suits, municipal workers in jeans and shirts with badges, men and women, mostly people of color, in orange prison uniforms filing in for arraignment. I made my way to the second floor and joined the line of ordinary people waiting for the 8 AM call.

The doors to the courtroom opened, and we filed into a windowless grey hall with harsh lighting and simple wooden benches. Most everyone sat apart, leaving wide spaces between themselves. A few did sit together and chatted which I found odd. We were strangers to each other, and I was determined to keep it so. I knew that I would be very unhappy sitting in a courtroom for an indeterminate number of days listening to someone else’s sad story, and I certainly was not alone. After the officers of the court thanked us for doing our civic duty and introduced the lawyers, they made it very clear that the selection process would only excuse people for cause, real reasons, not just that we would be bored and might have preferred to watch daytime soap operas. We were sworn in, taking an oath to answer their questions honestly. To soften my mood, I tried to listen and make myself curious about what had occurred and why this was a complaint that had to be settled with lawyers and judges and a few of my fellow prospective jurors sitting in judgement. Others read books or newspapers.

There were perhaps 35 prospective jurors in the pool, and it was after lunch before I was interviewed. We were questioned by the lawyers to see if we could be impartial, but it was also clear they were also looking for people who could be swayed by their version of the facts. Gradually some particulars of the case came to light. A middle aged woman had accused a Latino house painter of sexual molestation. I began to piece together the thread of the prosecution's argument: the painter had mistaken the flirtations of the woman as an invitation for sex. I couldn’t determine if they’d actually had sex, but apparently the woman was also, what are the words, at ease with her sexuality. The denouement was being held in suspense as if to entice us to follow salacious emotional details in the conflicting versions of the story that would be the heart of the case.

He was younger, and although no movie star, I imagined that he would have played the lover’s role convincingly. But there was some disconnect between his attitude and the alleged aggression that was beginning to emerge as a central point of the woman’s complaint. His smile was genuine. I could see that. Of course there were language and cultural barriers. I had worked on construction sites for years. I knew many immigrants who worked with their hands, and I respected them. I also knew the sexual banter that passed the time. I recognized his clean but rumpled denim shirt. He could never pay a fine. He couldn’t even afford a lawyer, and I actually had to wonder if he even understood the gravity of the accusation.

Their inequality, the arrogance of the woman--at least that was my first impression--she’d made no attempt to dress like a nun for the proceedings, my curiosity about trying to delve into her motivation for bringing the charge--I toyed with the idea of actually sitting. Suddenly a wave of conflicting emotions swept over me, doubt and fear, sympathy and revulsion, attraction, even sexual fantasy. My first impression was that he might have misread the situation. He certainly didn’t rape her, or did he? I couldn’t be sure. But more to the point: I couldn’t rely on my own judgement. In all honesty, I knew that I couldn’t serve on the jury. Even if I could have been impartial, even if there was the possibility that I could have saved a man from an unjust accusation, I knew I couldn’t sit through days of intense psychological reckoning while lawyers tore apart a poor man’s last shred of dignity.

Possibly I could have negotiated a path through the prosecution and the defense’s arguments. Possibly I could have sorted out my own feelings and really listened to what actually occurred. Or could I? I had been trying to do that in many situations in my own life with mixed results. My sexual encounter with Bob Hoffman was rape. I had been the person who misread the circumstance. Although I fully understood that my naivete didn’t relieve Hoffman’s guilt, I couldn’t trust myself to render judgement in a situation where so much was at stake. I couldn’t trust myself to render judgment in my own life.

My name came up. I was asked if there was any reason I couldn’t serve. “I was raped,” I responded. “Thank you. You’re excused,” the judge said quickly. I wish it were that easy.

Here is a link to the page that lists other pieces I've written about my relationship with Hoffman.

© Kenneth Ireland, 2021

The Sad Demise of Bob Hoffman

It is with a great deal of sadness that I find myself writing again about Bob Hoffman of the “world famous” Hoffman Process. I am aware that the group work that was developed by Claudio Naranjo and Hoffman, among others, has seemed to have been the catalyst for positive change for some individuals. As with many “New Age” personal development courses however, its promises do not mitigate the risks. I have detailed my involvement with Hoffman and Process in my other writing about the Process, but this is a story about Hoffman’s death in 1997.  

An enthusiast chided me with her spiritual understanding that everything in life happens for a reason, and claimed that she would never have changed a thing. She asked me if I would have made different choices knowing what I do now? My answer, “Of course, I’m not a complete idiot.” Nearly 50 years ago my life was falling apart. I made choices. Of course I have to live with the results of my choices, but to say that I always chose wisely is pure insanity. And I will certainly tell the story in hopes that some other kid can perhaps choose a more reasonable path. 

Hoffman’s roots are in the Spiritualist Church—not the hip Science of Mind practice, but the one with trace mediums, seances, and spirit messages. Hoffman claimed that the kernel of the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy, “Negative Love,” was transmitted to him during a visitation one night in 1968 by the spirit of Seigfried Fisher, a respected psychiatrist who had fled Vienna during the Nazi occupation. The disembodied Dr. Fisher took him through his own process and became his “Spirit Guide” who promised to open doors for him. 

Although Naranjo, along with Dr. Ernest Pecci and several other mental health professionals tried to mould a process that might allow a person to experience his or her own psychological life as the result of negative attitudes, behaviors, habits from their parents, it remains an orchestrated, contrived emotional experience where the risks far outweigh any promises. 

Despite Hoffman being a very difficult man—and I am not alone in my assessment—I always tried to remain friends with him. He was a man who had deeply influenced my life for better or worse. He was also another gay man who struggled with his sense of self-worth and purpose in an antagonistic culture. However, for reasons that were inevitably labeled as my personal failing or the result of a lack of understanding, empathy, love or compassion, I never succeeded. Whenever I made some effort to maintain or develop the relationship, and I was always the one who reached out, it would last for a period of time, and then I would have to back off. 

I phoned Hoffman in the Fall of 1995 or it might have been early in ‘96. I had returned from Hawaii where I’d tried to do a lot of self-care after working in a Buddhist AIDS Hospice for several years. Hoffman told me that he’s just been diagnosed with liver cancer, and that of course, there had to be some reason that I’d called. In Hoffman’s narcissism there was always some great mysterious purpose in events that only he could fathom. I thought the reason might be more mundane. I had been with many men who were dying. Perhaps I might be of some service, and I easily fell into sitting with him during his doctors’ visits, ct scans, disappointments and grasping for life. 

Before he began the very invasive medical treatment before the disease killed him, Hoffman decided to travel to Sao Paulo Brazil where there was a successful Process center. I forget the exact reason for the visit, but he told me that he had been treated like a guru, flowers strewn in his path, and that pleased him. 

I’ll never forget the circumstance of the conversation. We were in his room at the old Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco where he was recovering after being flown back from Brazil in an air-ambulance after a near death experience in the Albert Einstein Israelite Hospital in Sao Paulo. He’d seen a psychic surgeon, known as Dr. Fritz, who had operated on him with a kitchen knife, and nicked his liver, causing bleeding, infection and hospitalization. Luckily he’d just received the deposit from the new US owners of the intellectual property of the Process because the $50,000 for the flight had to be paid in cash in advance. Another fortunate quirk of fate, but this act of the telenovela came at a steep price, and he was a man who was always very interested in money.

It was surreal. A man who’d built a career around an otherworldly visit from a dead psychiatrist would of course be nearly killed by an unlicensed, untrained man channeling a dead surgeon doing a barbaric medical procedure in an filthy kitchen in a Brazilian suburb.

The denouement of the melodrama unfolded. Many visits to several oncologists, encouraging promises of cure, liver resection, an extremely difficult and painful recovery, a very brief remission, and then a steep rapid decline. 

I did not stay till the end. I saw some parts of his personality that for an ordinary man might be best left unsaid, but given that he is now a public figure, I will talk about them. I think that they are both part of the story of the Hoffman Process as well as my story and I intend to write more about my involvement and my transference. But for now, I will just mention that food that didn’t have to be kosher but had to look kosher. I called a rabbi to see what I could prepare that he could eat, but the sandwich was refused because vegetable spread looked like dairy. Then there was the saga of finding a hospital bed that had never held a dying person. It would have jinxed his recovery. And I confess that my hostility took a nasty turn when I tricked Hoffman into telling a very uncomfortable joke to his doctors at an elaborate party he organized to celebrate his cure.

Hope was dashed. None were immune to his anger when death finally had to be faced as inevitable.

I tried to be his personal assistant. I set up meetings with the people who meant something to Hoffman, including people with whom he had unfinished business. I had hoped that Hoffman might be able to repair some of his messier relationships and, in the terms of his personal belief system, be able to move on. God it was difficult. As I waded through the wreckage with him, he received—there is no other word of it—people he’d trained as Process teachers, people who’d helped him, other people to whom he owed a debt, people who were vying to make some money from his notoriety, and in all fairness, many people whom he’d helped.

I was personally very distressed that he would not reconcile with his own son. I didn’t see this at the time as part and parcel of my own transference, but it was. Whatever outcome between Hoffman and Michael was their affair, but it this experience eventually led me to finally reconcile with my own father before he died 15 years later. I will try to unravel this in my next post.

So I am faced with a personal dilemma here: do I call Hoffman a fraud? From what I experienced myself, he was a powerful force and it was negative. Has the Process that bears his name actually helped people? The answer is yes to both questions.

Here are the pieces that I've written about Hoffman. Although I have tried to be objective, it is impossible to take a disinterested position with regard to the Process. Hoffman sexually abused me about 6 months after I finished that first process.

 

The Ontological Odd Couple, and the Origins of the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy

#GayMeToo

The Sad Demise of Bob Hoffman

This Victim Refuses Silence 

A Very Personal Question: Can I Forgive Bob Hoffman?

Forgive and Forget? Impossible. An inquiry into Victimization.

"Bob Hoffman was a criminal. Simple." 

New Age Miracle or Fraud

Why Do Cults Need to Rewrite History?

Science vs. Spooks

Jonestown and our Deliverance from Cults

© Kenneth Ireland, 2021

Case 5 of the Mumonkan and Step 1

1/13/17

Case 5 of the Mumonkan

Mumon, Wu-men Hui-hai (無門慧開), the Chinese Ch’an Master says, "If you can respond to this dilemma properly, you give life to those who have been dead and kill those who have been alive." 

Here is Case 5, "Hsiang-yen: Up Tree." 

The priest Hsiang-yen said, "It is as though you were up in a tree, hanging from a branch with your teeth. Your hands and feet can't touch any branch. Someone appears beneath the tree and asks, `What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West?'”

If you do not answer, you evade your responsibility. If you do answer, you lose your life. What do you do?"

______

It has been at least 6 years since I took up the case. I told another story about Hsiang-yen in a piece I wrote about a difficult and wonderful conversation that I had with my mother a few months before she died ("The Gift of Tears"). Hsiang-yen must have been an immensely gifted teacher if he continues to inspire others to be honest and human more than a thousand years after his death.

Today I find myself totally swept up in the hanging man's dilemma as I begin to re-work Step 1 of the 12 Steps. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous puts the first step in simple, straightforward language: "I admit that I am powerless over [alcohol, drugs, food, sex]—that my life has become unmanageable." It's just the first step on a journey, and there is a story connected with my personal surrender.

Even if I'd never heard of Bodhidharma, there are questions in my life that I can't evade—my life depends on my answer. It might not be entirely clear to a 21st century reader that the question about Bodhidharma coming to the West carries enormous weight for anyone practicing with a Zen master. My answer unlocks the wonder of practice and the Buddha Way.

At my first 12 Step meeting, when asked "are there other alcoholics/addicts present?" I automatically said, "yes." I didn't grasp that the question was a life or death issue, that it carried all the weight of the person hanging by his or her teeth. I certainly didn't realize that it would turn my world upside down. I was about to learn that answering it truthfully meant that I was about to lose a life I'd become comfortable with, a life of deception I loved in a weird perverted way. I'd learned to talk my way around my addiction so well that I even believed its lies.

I had been practicing meditation for decades, but I missed the immediacy and urgency in that question—right now, right here, people in this room were suffering real biological and psychological effects of drug and alcohol abuse. If I'd been paying closer attention, it might have been easier to see the delusions I'd have to give up, and admit that I'd lost control of my life which is the baseline for any real conversation about sobriety. Another question follows an honest yes: could I examine the roots of my addiction clearly and move beyond denial? My sponsor was very direct, “Cut the bullshit and get real.” We all need real friends we can talk with, men and women who leave any pretense at the door.

Both the spirituality of the Big Book and Zen, I think, start from the same place: what in my experience got me stuck? It’s my dilemma, not the person on the cushion next to me, or the homeless guy stinking of urine on the bus that I can’t move away from. In Zen I am never asked to believe anything outside my own experience, not even for a split second.

What transformed this question for me from an intellectual consideration about the nature of addiction and alcoholism to one with all the force of Bodhidharma's coming to the west and facing the wall for 9 years in meditation? My roommate committed suicide, and I found myself hanging from the branch by the skin of my teeth.

I came home to discover my roommate's bloated body dead for at least three days. Just the smell of the house was overwhelming. The shock sent me spinning emotionally and psychologically. The police and medical examiners suggested that I call a friend. The man I called came right over, put an arm around my shoulder and listened without any judgment to whatever came out of my mouth as they carried Dean's body down the stairs. 

My response was to lapse into an uncontrolled rage of using drugs and drinking. As I look back over those few days and weeks, Ash proved the depth of his friendship: he wouldn't allow me to play the victim, "Oh you poor guy, how horrible!" or indulge any self importance or fake heroism to let myself off the hook. He told me that even if I was just a guy who happened to be standing by when a tragedy unfolded, I still had to clean up the mess before I could move on. I had no other choice if I was going to choose life. He encouraged me to face the circumstances without drama, and get it done. And he took me to a meeting. Friends don't get any better.

A long meditation practice follows me into the 12-step work, not as baggage but as a friend. When I listen to someone in one of the rooms coming to terms with the concept of a Higher Power, having been told that his or her program depends on acknowledgment and surrender to Something greater than the self, I can only admire the struggle and right-mindedness of their effort. My own experience was very similar. At some point the practice of meditation, or maybe just growing older with more life experience, I dismantled most of the conceptual notions I had believed and put my trust in, but what replaced it was a far more intimate sense of how I am, at the core of my being, connected to the profound inner-workings of the universe.

And even though my own inner experience started to become clear only after long hours on the meditation cushion, I know that this path is open to anyone, even in a blink of an eye. So meditate. Just do it.

The instructions to enter the koan’s world are really quite simple: Sit down, straighten out my spine so that I can stay awake and alert, focus on my breath, pay attention. That’s enough meditation instruction to get started. Then as I settle in, if I choose, I can get real about how I respond to Hsiang-yen’s question, what do you do when you're hanging from a branch by your teeth? My life depends on my answer, where really, no kidding, I'm going to fall into an abyss when I open my mouth. I don’t believe anything, not even for a split second, that I have not experienced myself, but I have also come to trust, thanks to my teachers and my own experience, that the koan will shake an honest answer loose.

Perhaps our answer allows us to simply fall into the unknown and follow the example of the trees' own leaves in the Fall. Thank you, Lucille Clifton, for the capping verse:

The Lesson Of The Falling Leaves

the leaves believe

such letting go is love

such love is faith

such faith is grace

such grace is god

i agree with the leaves

This Victim Refuses Silence

My rape, its aftermath, and my poor choices

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Many readers have told me that this post was difficult to read. It was also difficult to write, but I will not be silent. I originally wrote about my abuse in Bob Hoffman—#GayMeToo. I have expanded on it in two other posts: Forgive and Forget? Impossible and A Very Personal Question: Can I Forgive Bob Hoffman?

I can find no silver lining in the story of my abusive relationship with Bob Hoffman, but even if there were one, the relationship was so muddy that I don’t know where to begin to look. It is a lot like trying to write about it. I feel that I cannot write because I would be obligated to disclose too much about what I consider personal failures. I cannot write from the position of a life that didn’t turn out even though opportunities and avenues were most probably closed off to me by the events I’m going to describe. The only thing I can say with any certainty is that my life is not what my parents nor I envisioned for myself, but it has been my own life, and I am responsible for my choices. 

Any light at the end of the tunnel would shine. It would mean that the residue of the abuse was over, and I would be able to forget Hoffman and our relationship. But that does not happen. It’s just not enough for me to declare “This happened,” and move past it as I’ve been counseled from many quarters, new age therapists, love and light gurus. I know that Hoffman’s selfish actions had an effect on me. Of course they added unnecessary suffering. As I recently told a friend, every gay person I know would love to be guided by the loving, wise and resourceful example of a older queer man or woman. But by the luck of the draw, I got a narcissistic predator. I’ve told the story of how Hoffman came into my life in some detail in my blog Bob Hoffman—#GayMeToo.

A friend recently told me that she had accomplished what the Hoffman Process promises, “putting the past in the past and obliterating the traces of your parents’ negative influence" in a 20 minute process of stamping out any memories of them in a ritual practice. Only time can judge its effectiveness. Only future actions which do not bear the imprint of past missteps can be trusted as indicators that the past is truly in the past. 

As I've watched the #MeToo movement unfold in the press, all the attention has been focused on the bad actors. Whether famous men Epstein or Weissman or Trump or Cardinal Pell or ordinary men like Hoffman, we cannot allow any one of them to escape the consequences of their actions. But it occurs to me that what’s still missing are stories of the victims. 

And so I have decided to write about my abuse. The only possible path I see to freeing myself is a thorough investigation of what occurred, including my own missteps. If my writing really leads to liberation, “the function of freedom," in the words of Toni Morrison, "is to free someone else;” so I will write as candidly as I can. I had hoped to avoid a painful and lewd description of the sexual encounter as I describe some of the repercussions, but find I have to talk about some of it. 

Bob Hoffman, my therapist and mentor, invited me to dinner less than 5 months after I completed the first 13 week Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy. After some very awkward conversation and a few glasses of wine, I found myself on the living room floor of my shared apartment naked, on my stomach, being brutally raped. After Hoffman had his orgasm, my anus was bleeding. Then the situation became surreal—I listened to apologies which were actually blame shifting—he told me that pain was normal when a man first had anal sex and that in time I’d learn to enjoy it—that anal sex was an important part of spiritual development because it mirrored the reality of the mother-father god, both active and passive. I remember this statement after all these years because of the horror and lunacy of justifying rape in the name of some intrasex godhead. I didn’t throw him out as I should have, had I been capable of it, but when he asked if we could have another date, I did say no. However, in true co-dependent fashion, I left the door open to further contact as friends. I realize now that I had to—I was still in transference with him. In fact we maintained a strained acquaintance until he died.

I came out as a gay man in the Hoffman Process, but the process wasn’t coming to terms with a part of myself that I’d left hidden, festering under parental and societal disapproval. It wasn’t part of a program of careful analysis and self discovery. I wasn’t led by a professional to see layers of self-deception. Rather I stood uncomfortably in the doorway to Hoffman’s office, while he, red in the face, screamed that I was gay, told me that I was playing games and couldn’t love myself. This only reinforced my own learned, negative views of being gay. I sensed the same angry, defensive stance in the way he dealt with his own homosexualty and he certainly displayed its brutality when he forced anal intercourse.

Hoffman was both a narcissist and a predator, but I was in such denial that I allowed myself to be manipulated. Over the course of intermittent conversations which spanned more than 25 years, I discovered that he lied about many things; he exaggerated; he made empty promises; and he entertained grandiose ideas about himself. Dr. Fisher, the being whom he called his spirit-guide, had not been, as he proclaimed publicly, a family friend but rather his therapist; he felt he was destined to have a young lover because the immense contribution he was making; he had singled me out when he first saw me in Naranjo’s SAT; he started frequenting the only gay bar in Berkeley to stalk me, and not because, as he told me then, he usually stopped in to relax on his way home. The truth is that initiating a sexual relationship with me was a criminal violation of his professional responsibility as a therapist, mentor and spiritual guide, but his psychosis did not allow him to understand this.

In true predator fashion he groomed me. He told me that, if I played my cards right and listened to him, I was destined to become a leader in the gay community; that I had extraordinary powers, like his spiritualist mentor—I think he named her, Florence Becker, though he was vague—had singled him out as a person of great psychic abilities. He also insisted that I was attracted to him, and he knew it because he was a powerful psychic as well as the fact that I had an erection during our encounter. Recalling this fills me with disgust. I recall that most of the people around Claudio viewed Hoffman as a buffoon, a conman, or at best a crazy wisdom seer. I thought he was unintelligent and crude plus being sexually repulsive, yet something compelled me to continue to place my trust in him.

Within a year of our encounter, I’d left the Jesuits, moved to San Francisco with my SAT friend Hal Slate and began experiencing the burgeoning Castro gay scene of the ‘70’s. I became promiscuous, but, at the same time, I was very unhappy and frustrated with sex itself. I could not achieve orgasm. I cannot claim that Hoffman’s brutal abuse was the direct cause of my sexual dysfunction but I am certain that it played some part. But my solution to the problem became more of a problem. As in my college days and my life as a Jesuit, alcohol became an antiseptic for the wounds. But now pot, and eventually cocaine and methamphetamines, became a way to lubricate sexual activity. 

There is a very high rate of alcoholism and substance abuse among victims of rape, and that is certainly part of my story. Drugs opened up a whole new world for me though they took an immense toll. Eventually the number of days of work I missed because I was still too high to work safely began to outnumber the days I was late because I was hung over and unable to get out of bed. This December I will be 10 years free of drugs and alcohol. The 12 Step Program does not encourage any playing victim and always redirects a person to recognize his or her own part in the matter. However facts and situations do matter. Hoffman’s sexual abuse, the threads of our relationship, and my part in the matter are all part of the equation.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind —

Emily Dickinson

Here are the pieces that I've written about Hoffman. Although I have tried to be objective, it is impossible to take a disinterested position with regard to the Process. Hoffman sexually abused me about 6 months after I finished my first process.

 

The Ontological Odd Couple, and the Origins of the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy

#GayMeToo

The Sad Demise of Bob Hoffman

This Victim Refuses Silence 

A Very Personal Question: Can I Forgive Bob Hoffman?

Forgive and Forget? Impossible. An inquiry into Victimization.

"Bob Hoffman was a criminal. Simple." 

New Age Miracle or Fraud

Why Do Cults Need to Rewrite History?

Science vs. Spooks

Jonestown and our Deliverance from Cults

© Kenneth Ireland, 2020