Introduction: Have you ever had an experience that was so strange, so unusual and so downright mind-blowing that you never told anyone about it?

I’m not talking about some run of the mill alien abduction (with or without anal probe) or a drunken hillbilly’s unreported one night stand with Sasquatch. What follows is my hard to believe but impossible to forget trippy as fuck (TAF) experience. It’s about time… to tell it.

Many moons ago right before my painful separation and difficult divorce I signed up for what I thought to be an interesting but unconventional weekend workshop in Boulder Colorado called, “Holotropic Breathwork: Finding Your Spirit Animal”.

I think it was around 1997 give or take a miserable horrendous year or two.

At the time I felt extremely anxious and depressed about my crumbling marriage partially because I still loved my wife Rona and partly because I realized that getting divorced would be an enormous life changing event and psychological trauma for all involved including our three young sons, ages 7,9 and 11 years old. Either way I figured it couldn’t hurt to try something different by parlaying with the ethereal spirit realm and my dead, dormant or possibly just hibernating higher consciousness.

Feeling so midlife miserable at that exact point in time my so-called spirituality and higher power had pretty much gone MIA only to be replaced by a tidal wave of fear, anxiety and impending doom…along with deep-seated feelings of guilt, shame, embarrassment and failure. Being a licensed marriage and family therapist on the cusp of getting divorced myself was an unusually difficult and bitter pill to swallow. I knew I needed something stronger than Prozac and well beyond the scope of any existing “talk therapy” circa 1997.

The three day experiential seminar was held in a comfortable studio space in Boulder and predictably was furnished with wall to wall floor mats, hippie style throw blankets and cushy overstuffed pillows. I joined two dozen other brave souls, astral travelers and/or similarly messed up desperate individuals in learning how to use “holotropic breathing” along with guided imagery and evocative music to create a psychotherapeutic “altered state of consciousness”. This powerful blend of body/mind techniques was called the Grof process. Developed by Stanislav Grof, a world-renowned Czech transpersonal psychiatrist, the Grof process promised a short-lived but extraordinarily deep “lucid dream state” without having to ingest psychoactive substances or psychedelic drugs. Due to Grof’s abiding interest in indigenous cultures and non-traditional healing the seminar was also designed to help participants identify and then get in touch with their Native American spirit guide, animal totem and associated “animal attributes”. Finally, we were told that all of the aforementioned if used properly could increase ones “warrior spirit” as well as protect and inspire them as needed in the future. That sounded good to me. I did however question whether my highly skeptical mind and independent nature would prevent me from being open or receptive enough to suggestion and direction from others. I’m usually the guy in the group process or workshop who is thinking but not saying, “This is total bullshit” or politely raises his hand to ask, “Wait, what exactly do you mean by “warrior spirit?” while everyone else is nodding in agreement.

For some reason I presumed that my spirit animal would be the American bison, not just because it was my alma mater’s (University of Colorado) football team mascot but also because the buffalo seemed to possess the exact character traits and personal attributes I covet. A large muscular creature with tremendous strength and spiritual meaning to Native Americans, the bison was an impressive sad-eyed beast that once roamed the American Plains in large herds nobly sacrificing itself to near extinction so that other far more cunning and predatory species like wolves, Native American people and greedy white game hunters could pursue them, kill them, feast on their flesh or use their various body parts (mostly bones and fur) for commercial purposes. Actually the greedy white hunters sometimes just shot the wild native buffaloes for pure sport and left their noble bodies there to rot. Just thinking or reading about buffaloes back in the day made me tear up. In retrospect I guess I was far more into TV Western movie melodrama and Hollywood inspired depictions of heroism and heroic martyrdom than I ever realized. Not necessarily surprising considering that I practically worshipped the ground or mud that the Lone Ranger, Zorro and Davy Crockett stood on.

Also in retrospect and in all honesty it’s likely I naively and somewhat narcissistically identified with the American buffalo as a kind of “Dancing With Wolves” sacred sacrificial figure. Poor me much? Not all that many years after the Oscar winning movie hit theater screens in 1990 and in my soon-to-be-divorced mind I naturally preferred to see myself as the sensitive yet often misunderstood “good guy” both in my marriage and probably in every romantic relationships before and after that. In my self serving personal narrative and coincidentally self produced and self directed Cliff Mazer movie in my head I not only got off on and got away with seeing myself as an innocent victim in life but also was free to cast myself as the Kevin Costner handsome hero leading man role that practically everybody likes, idolizes and roots for… including extremely good-looking wounded women, captive Indian squaws, and assorted other dark-haired damsels in distress.

With the buffalo as my macho/muscular Jesus Christ-like spirit animal I somehow believed I might emerge from the bizarre Boulder breathwork workshop and the anticipated ashes of my looming divorce, arise from my Humpty Dumpty deflated and depressed mental mindset and be resurrected to a powerful new state of near perfection and wholeness somewhat like the immortal Phoenix in Greek mythology. Now of course I see how crazy and delusional that all sounds but as Charlie Sheen the spiraling down (rather than rising up like a Phoenix) drug-addict/alcoholic once said and lived to regret it later, “Winning!” #tigerbloodwinning!”.

Of course I was totally wrong about all of that and about a whole bunch of other things later on in life as well. I first started to realize when deep into my drug-free lucid dream and breathwork workshop my animal totem/spirit guide turned out to be a fat pudgy black bear along with a somewhat fat pudgy Native American guy named Dancing Bear. Even tho I can still recall the pungent smell of burning sage, cedar and sweetgrass that Dancing Bear used in his smudge and eagle feather tribal ritual and trance dance, other parts of my holotropic revery are fuzzy to recall now after all these many years. I believe Dancing Bear was a Pueblo or possibly Ute Indian and a “masked trickster” shaman who participated in various tribal ceremonies mostly by dancing in a very melodic and repetitive way to a mesmerizing drum beat somewhat akin to an indigenous rave.

However, even more memorable than that was the following: towards the very end of my lucid dream and Boulder weekend workshop Dancing Bear abruptly stopped dancing, turned towards me and peeled off his primitive fur-lined face covering and animal headdress and revealed himself to be someone I rarely ever thought about before that moment….my real biological father Lawrence (Lorry) Hiken. Lawrence or “Daddy Lorry” Hiken in our subsequent blended Mazer family folklore was a less talked about ancestor figure who married my mother in 1951 and in apparent mutual happiness and marital bliss produced two sons, Neal (1952) and Cowboy loving Cliff (1953). Lorry was a young, somewhat nerdy but likable, intelligent and ambitious physician/radiologist who had recently joined a fast growing group medical practice in Los Angeles by way of Santa Fe, New Mexico. According to my mother Claire, Daddy Lorry one night without any warning suffered a massive and catastrophic cerebral hemorrhage in February 1956 and died unexpectedly at 31 years of age when I was only two and a half. Beyond a pile of faded black and white Polaroid pictures, Kodak baby photos and peeling plastic spiral photograph albums handed down to me by relatives over the years I had no conscious memories of the man. Zero. Not even one.

Still in the throes of my lucid dream and shortly after my initial shock and surprise wore off my father Lorry approached me directly and told me that he loved me. He also said he was very sorry he had to leave me so abruptly but that he would “see me again someday”. Somewhat predictably I then proceeded to cry… ok I sobbed like a hysterical 44 year-old two and a half year old and then “woke up” suddenly from my Grof Process dream state. Everybody else in the room was already wide awake and giving each other late 1990’s group hugs. I distinctly remember a staff member giving me a cold glass of water and saying, “Drink this. You really went deep”. As mentioned, until now I’ve never told another human being or living soul about this particularly mind-blowing mystical experience except for my ex-wife Rona who unfortunately also passed away in 1999 at 45 years of age from Stage 4 metastatic lung cancer, one short year after her initial diagnosis and two short years after finalizing our very difficult and regrettably contentious divorce.

Such a powerful, cathartic and unusual experience, spiritual or otherwise is not easily forgotten but can still leave a person with as many questions as it might appear to answer. Given my biological father Lorry’s sudden death and abrupt departure from this earthly plane and my subsequent lifelong fascination for all things “Cowboy and Indians” … including walking around naked as a little kid wearing only my cowboy hat, gun belt and toy guns while watching black and white TV Westerns and syndicated television shows like the “Lone Ranger” and then later on in life compulsively remodeling my various residences in contemporary “Southwest Style” with rounded corners, faux adobe walls and Native American furnishings perhaps the biggest and most poignant question I was left to ponder was, “Not counting the Lone Ranger, Tonto and that pudgy Indian dude with the eagle feather and animal headdress who was that masked man in my lucid dream and will I really see him (Daddy Lorry) again”? Next to that $64,000 question I also still wonder, “What’s the deal with rolly-polly bears as my animal spirit and why not a big and buff beatific buffalo”?

End of Part One