Almost Lost by Beatrice Sparks Page A

eyes and relax. See if you can feel sunbeams caressing your face now.”
    After a minute or two, he whispered, “I can. I can. I really can. I wish I could just escape into that sunbeam kind of time-stands-still feeling forever.”
    â€œYou can’t do that. You wouldn’t even want to. There are too many exciting, adventurous, creative, challenging things you still have to do with your life. But you can , on occasion, encourage yourself to take side trips back to that private awesome world that only you own.”
    â€œThat’s a cool thought.”
    â€œWhat does the Jesus part mean to you?”
    â€œAah…safety…belonging…love.”
    â€œSeems like a pretty good combination to me.”
    â€œThis will probably sound disturbed, and I couldn’t say it to anyone but you and my mom, but it makes me smile inside when I think of ‘Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam’ and old-time kid things. I’d like to be a good, clean, little kid again, now and forever.”
    â€œHow does being a good, clean, big kid now and forever strike you as a cutting off thought for today?”
    SUMMARY OF SESSION
    Sammy talked about his problems in East Los Angeles. He wanted to get out but didn’t know how. His gang’s “turf” was its own country with its own laws and boundaries. He stayed drunk or stoned to exist. We talked about what he might have done, how negativity is literally a toxic poison to the human mind, and how he might choose a “feel good” song to replay in his mind when necessary.
    Samuel Gordon Chart
    Thursday, August 11, 7:45 A.M.
    Sixth Visit
SAMUEL (SAMMY) GORDON, 15 years old
(Sammy called at 6:30 A.M. and asked if he could
come in before school)
    Â 
    â€œYou look as though you had a really bad night.”
    â€œI did that for sure! I think that the unbelievable, unforgivableness of my past is just beginning to really sink in! I had nightmares all night, each one getting more nightmarish.”
    â€œCome on, Sammy, you’re supposed to be dumping out, not building up.”
    â€œYeah, I know, but I can’t make sense out of how someone who was raised in a loving, caring, privileged home like I was, who had friends and hobbiesand everything that is supposed to make them normal, could go off and do the abnormal things I did. I wonder if there’s something wrong with my brain, if I’ve got a tumor or weird chemicals or something. I can understand the kids who didn’t know any better not doing better , but me…there was no excuse. I don’t know how I ever got from here to there.”
    â€œYou got there one step at a time, precious person. One, sliding, downhill step at a time. You were suffering from depression, which is possibly the worst form of human suffering, and you began giving yourself constant negative conditioning until you squeezed out every bit of joy and light in your life! That can happen to anyone who has not been forewarned and forearmed about and against the NEGATIVE POWER OF NEGATIVE THINKING!”
    â€œI wish I’d known then what I know now.”
    â€œBut you didn’t, dear Samuel. That’s why it is so imperative that we start emphasizing to people, especially young people, the NEGATIVE POWER OF NEGATIVE THINKING . Okay, so you, like millions of other people, during a down time in your life inflicted negative thinking patterns on yourself and allowed the negatives to grow until they took over—”
    Sammy interrupted. “And I allowed CR (CRANK chemicals) and sap (alcohol) to drag me ever deeper and deeper under, until I was not even hardly a human being anymore…”
    â€œOh, Sammy, I know you regret your past mistakes, and you should! But don’t hoard them in your heart and mind so you can continuously wallow in them like a pig does in the mud.”
    â€œI want to stop, but first I’ve got to get rid of more junk and more junk and more junk. It