Author: Josef
Series: Stand Alone
Genre: Autobiography
Publisher: Self – Published
Release Date: Sept 17 2016
Edition/Formats: eBook
Blurb/Synopsis:
A dark Journey into the light is the true story of a man who, for sixty
years, led a double life.
Josef is lost in a secret world of sexual gratification, a
true-life Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, unable to halt the “roller coaster of
conflicting emotional extremes that never stopped long enough for me to get
off.”
“I gave myself to that sexual playground completely, and
loved every minute of it when it was happening. It was only afterwards that
spikes of shame, guilt, and self-¬loathing would be driven deep into my heart.”
He traces the beginnings of his obsession to his childhood,
where his natural innocent curiosity and need for exploration were at odds with
his Catholic upbringing and the view of his extremely repressed mother, both of
whom regarded the human body as ‘dirty’ and ‘shameful’.
For sixty years, Josef lived a secret double life. The only
people who knew about this other life were the professional mistresses,
trannies, and prostitutes with whom he indulged every conceivable sexual
fantasy. No one in his ‘other’ life had any idea of who he really was or the
things he did.
Yet his secret life claimed a terrible toll. The failure of
his first marriage. The loss of his son. The loss of his beloved second wife.
Only after extensive therapy was he finally able to see and
feel the light of compassion, and allow the healing energy of forgiveness to
begin taking away the pain.
In his journey, Josef explores an astonishing variety of
topics. In addition to sexual addiction and the hidden world of BDSM, he delves
into the burden of guilt of the Catholic Church, fear, political correctness,
non-¬judgment, love and loss, philosophy, the soul, spiritual awakening, and
healing.
This is the journey of an ordinary man lost in an
extraordinary secret, dark world, who ultimately finds his way out of the
tangled mess through the power of love and forgiveness.
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A Dark
Journey into the Light was a lifetime in the making and more than 2 years in
the writing. One of the biggest issues in life is sex and people usually make a
choice. They either follow their desires, or they don't. This book looks at the
issues that arose, and the conflict of emotions I had to deal with when I chose
both, although it more correctly felt like they
chose me. Life became an exercise in
learning about myself by exploring what "lies beneath" as it reared
it’s head and found it’s way to the surface. There was no way around the
exploration because the battle for supremacy raging between the two was inside
me. What was the war all about and what would become of me? This book is about
my journey of continuing self-discovery as I move through the mystery we call
life.
The book is
an autobiography so it's pretty much all about me and who I am. I suppose there
are a few small things that aren't covered. For instance, I like dogs and
horses and I love gardening. I'm a country boy and grew up with spiders and
snakes, and although I'm not keen on spiders if one crawls up my trouser leg
they don't freak me out either. A snake up the trouser leg though would be a
different story! Think “a hillbilly version of River Dance.” I love long hikes over
the mountains or across the plains. Just as long as I'm walking somewhere, but
at times I wonder if I'm just trying to leave something behind.
A Dark
Journey into the Light is an interesting and thought provoking book for anyone
who has ever questioned urges and desires familiar to us all. It provides
interesting insights into the workings of the mind of a sex addict. We are much
more than what we feel, and less than what we think. This book explores the
healing that is possible when we find balance between the two.
Author Links
Note from the Author
This is the story of my life. It has not been fabricated, exaggerated,
or embellished in any way. It’s the raw truth and I’m not really sure why I’m
writing it, but my therapist thinks it’s a good idea, and I can understand her
reasoning about that. Writing down my life’s story might simply be a part of
the healing process, so I can finally move on with my life and live it like a
normal person.
All my life I’ve wished for nothing more than just to be
normal, as I’ve looked around and envied other people’s untroubled lives. At
least that is how they appear on the surface. We can all be quite certain that
most people harbor some secrets in their lives. Those secrets might be small
things they regret or feel ashamed about. I wish people did not need to have
secrets and live in fear and guilt about their lives, because most things
people hide from are not worth the stress, but I guess I’m the same.
Maybe I should be able to shout from the rooftops, and tell
the world I’m not afraid or ashamed of my life, but in my heart I know many
people will stand in judgment of me. At the same time, I know deep down a lot
of people would applaud my courage if I did so, even if their own fears
prevented them from supporting me publicly. Therein lies the problem.
If you stand outside society’s norm you stand alone, through
social judgment and fear. Maybe I should just include it all in the category of
fear, and leave judgment out of it, considering all judgment has its roots in
fear.
Fear; the prime mover for almost every expression in our
lives. What would it be like to be free of fear?
Everyone has their problems, and people go through a great
deal of pain and suffering. I personally know people I would not trade places
with for anything on earth. We are all plagued by similar run-of-the-mill
issues, such as marriage breakups, financial problems, health issues, and
everything else that goes with living on this planet, as we try to coexist with
a whole lot of people. With most of them we have almost nothing in common,
except a pattern of similar reactions that maintain a reasonable level of
“sanity” in society. And it is all bound in fear.
It doesn’t sound like much of a way to live, but if you
question people about their lives and propose the idea that they are living in
fear, almost all of them will disagree. Some will even become angry, and
possibly violent, if you dare to start a debate with them on the issue. The
cruel irony is they won’t see, even then, that their reaction to the idea of
their lives being based on fear is in itself a fear-based reaction.
So why don’t I tell people about my life? Why don’t I stand
up, step out of the shadows society creeps around in, and put my trust in
people to accept my life?
Simple. People cannot be trusted.
Everyone knows this because everyone has a secret. The only
variable is the size of the secret, and mine would attract a massive excess
baggage fee if I packed it in a suitcase and boarded a plane.
I’ve experienced, or still do to some degree, all those
problems I spoke about: divorce, health, finance, and so on. I’m not saying my
life is difficult in the main, and in fact I often count myself lucky, giving
thanks for my life and the many things I enjoy, because unlike some others, at
least I have my health. I can walk, talk, eat, see, and hear. I also have a
brain that works well enough, which gives me the opportunity to make something
of myself, and do something with my life. I really cannot complain, so what
makes my life so different my therapist thinks it’s a good idea to write it
down?
I don’t think the aspect of my life in question is particularly
unusual, or different, from that of a large percentage of the population, so I
guess it comes down to a question of degree and scope. When I consider those
factors I can’t help feeling my life has been a little unusual to say the
least, and a lot unusual to “say the most”.
There’s no doubt my life could, and would, be summed up by a
lot of people with words like sick, deviant, gross, pathetic, abhorrent,
disgusting, depraved, and so on.
These words are not new to me. I’ve tarred myself with every
one of them over the years, and nobody else could project the depth of feeling
in them more strongly than I have against myself. That projection evoked
feelings of shame, guilt, unworthiness, and self-loathing that cannot be
imagined. Even if I told you it’s impossible to imagine the things I’ve done,
and then gave you a hint, you still would not guess at the depth and breadth of
my life experience.
I’ve written about this in a way that tries to depict how I
felt at the time and how I feel now, and can only use words or terms that make
that possible. This book is not for the prudish or faint-hearted, so if you
like your reality painted over and sugar-coated, then this is not for you, and
I suggest you make a nice cup of tea and watch re-runs of Days of Our Lives instead.
I’m not complaining about my lot, and in some strange way I
have even come to appreciate it after all this time. All I want now is to make
some sense of it and possibly enrich the remainder of my life, and maybe even
help someone else with theirs.
*
It all seemed to begin harmlessly enough as a young child in
primary school but when I was a young teenager, an innocent conversation with
my mother raised the idea in me that my turbulent, obsessive journey had
actually begun when I was just a baby. I explore this in chapter 5.
In time I had no doubt about this, and it often led me to
wonder whether it was some kind of karmic load I was unloading, or if I was
building up a karmic load that would crush the life out of my soul.
This question would plague me throughout the decades to
come, but whatever the explanation, I was powerless to do anything about it.
All I could do was hang in, and hang on, as I plunged headlong through a
chaotic world of sensory self-gratification.
Where do I even start to give someone an idea of the duality
of the life I have lived for as long as I can remember? There is that old
cliché about starting at the beginning, and it may be right, but let’s just
skip ahead for a moment, because honestly, if I’m going to write this down I
don’t have time for norms or clichés.
Skipping ahead will also give me a clear reminder of why I’m
writing this, and what I’m writing about. I’ll come back later and try to join
some dots to give a clearer picture of what it always felt like to me: a life
unlived. Is that too dramatic, to call it a life unlived? I lived something,
didn’t I?
We all have some notion of what life should be like, or what
we wish it was like, but in my mind and heart my life never measured up to any
of my wishes. It just never felt like living. It felt like I was trapped in
some kind of time warp, or parallel universe, where I could only watch my life
happening around me as though it was someone else’s. But it is what it is.
Ooops, that sounds like a cliché.
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