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My Journey Begins
Introduction
Fear in the journey Joy in the coming home A part of the heart Gets lost in the learning Somewhere along the road. Dan Fogelberg
Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home. Matsuo Basho
The spiritual path - is simply the journey of living our lives. Everyone is on a spiritual path; most people just don't know it. Marianne Williamson
We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey. Stephen R. Covey
The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination. Don Williams, Jr.
Let your mind start a journey thru a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be. Close your eyes let your spirit start to soar, and you'll live as you've never lived before. Erich Fromm
Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it; that is all! But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, Wending through unknown country home. And so, at this time, I greet you, not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and shadows flee away. Father Giovanni Giocondo
The journey begins. For many, or maybe for all, the journey begins without awarenessbefore any awakening. Awakening comes laterafter we've noticed that we have been walking in circles for most of our lives.
Even then, we weren't really walking in circles. No circle is the same as any other. It has changed. We have changed. Maybe the first awakening is the awareness that we weren't really walking in circles. Maybe the first awakening is that we have been on the journey since the beginning.
The English writer Evelyn Underhill (1875 1941) identified three types of mystics on the basis of the symbols used to describe their goal and the processes used to reach that goal: (1) the pilgrim on his journey to a better country; (2) the lover searching for his perfect mate; and (3) the alchemist performing the great work to attain the perfect state. For the moment, I will use the journey metaphor to represent all three.
According to mythologist Joseph Campbell (1904 1987), before the hero crosses the threshold on his way to perform the heroic act, he receives supernatural aid and/or mentoring from a tutor. In Ian Fleming's (1908 1964) novels, this stage of the journey occurs when Q instructs James Bond in the use of his sophisticate gadgets when Bond gets briefed on his new mission. In J. R. R. Tolkien's (1892 1973) The Hobbit, this stage is represented in Gandalf the Grey's aid to Bilbo and his aid to Frodo in his Lord of the Rings. In this stage we acquire the preparatory tools we will need later on. We feel excitement and anticipation, joy and faith.
I was fortunate to grow up in a family that acknowledged and, to some extent, embraced much of what was soon to become the central tenets of the New Age movement. On the last page of the calendar hanging on the kitchen wall was a human figure with arrows pointing to the body parts ruled by each zodiac sign. I was Virgothe intestines. Not exactly the most attractive body part. My family members often reminded one another of the similarities between our personalities and our Sun signs. We also talked about precognition, telepathy, psychokinesis, hauntings, spirits, and life after death. One distant family member was a very gifted psychic, but she died before I was born.
My spiritual journey in this life began early. During the summer of 1958 I attended vacation Bible school at the Mt. Calvary Evangelical Lutheran Church on the next street overthen the Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church. Before that, I remember my mother, her parents, and my father's mother reading to me from a children's book of Bible stories. Most of the stories were from the Old Testamentespecially from Genesis. Some were stories about Jesus from the New Testament. I quickly came to think of Jesus as my rescuer and as my older or elder bother.
Most of my family members attended churchthe Methodist and the Baptist. These same family members valued intelligence, science, reason, logic, and technology. Of course, there existed conflicts among these different ideologiesthe spiritual/metaphysical/paranormal, the conventional/traditional/religious, and the scientific/evolutionary/materialistic. But we rarely dwelled on what might have become divisive issues.
I attended Sunday school at the nearby University United Methodist Churchthen the University Methodist Church. My mother's parents attended the church regularly. My parents attended less regularly. My brothers also attended Sunday school. I sang in the boys' choir. I also memorized Bible verses chosen by my paternal grandmother.
I did not normally attend church as a child. When I did as an adult, I had little tolerance for the structure and content of the church service. I attended mass at a Roman Catholic Church. I also attended services at Baptist, Bible Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Pentecostal, and Church of God churches.
Much later I attended services of several Christian Science, Unitarian Universalist, Spiritualist, Unity, and Religious Science churches. The content was much better at these later churches, but I never found the structure of the services to be religious or spiritual in any way. In fact, I find them completely antithetical to any of their stated goals. How can you concentrate when someone is always talking or singing? How can you grow without participating in a one-to-one personal encounter?
Now back to my childhood religious education. The Methodists were an enlightened bunch. They took a modern approach to spirituality and to psychological, social, and economic problems. They valued the knowledgeable contributions of modern science and saw no conflict between Christianity and evolution. They demonstrated concern about social and psychological problems and took positive action to aid the poor. They taught that science would heal the body, psychology would heal the mind, and love would heal the world.
Occasionally, they voiced the belief that science would one day comprehend the nature of the soul and pierce the barriers between life and life-after-death. A study that reported the loss of a minuscule amount of weight at the time of death was proof that science would one day find the soul.
The Methodists accepted human diversity and taught spiritual universalismthe eventual salvation of everyone. In Sunday school we studied other religions and went on field trips to other churches and synagogues. I learned Greek and Roman mythology at school and Hindu and Buddhist mythology at Sunday school.
Although they officially believed in the Nicene Creed and frequently recited the Apostles' Creed, the Methodists viewed the stories of the Bible as symbolic allegories that provided guidance for moral and spiritual problems. Jesus was regarded as our teacher and exemplar, the perfect human--not a supernatural savior or a god.
One of my Sunday school teachers performed past life regressions during Sunday school. This was not the official position of the church, but it demonstrated the openness of the particular Methodist church that I attended. At the time I had my doubts about reincarnation because most Westerners tended to oversimplify the process of rebirth. "If reincarnation actually occurred, it must be subject to the laws of science like all natural phenomena," I thought. "One can't come and go willy-nilly as one pleases. There must be mechanisms that determine the process."
By 1962 I had become aware of the workings of numbers in our lives. The positive power of the number threethesis, antithesis, and synthesiswas difficult to deny. The lucky three. Even God seemed to prefer to manifest in threes. Within my own head I detected three tough forces and three clear voicesthe id, ego, and superego, the Parent, Adult, and Child.
Then came 1964. My young, well-educated, and somewhat charismatic science teacher was adamant in his teachings that it was good that astronomy had separated from astrology, chemistry from alchemy, and physics from magic. He taught that the new sciences replaced the old, superstitious pseudosciences. He acted as if it were ludicrous and possibly even immoral or illegal to mention the once noble pseudosciences. No educated person would ever give them a moment of their time.
As much as I loved science, it was obvious to me that for much of the population astrology, palmistry, and the paranormal were not only an accepted part of life, but could also be beneficial at times. If astrology didn't work, if it were pure superstition, then how could so many people be deluded for so long? Horoscope guide books and magazines were sold everywhere. If astrology truly was a pseudoscience, then shouldn't science prove that there was no truth to it, and these books and magazines be removed from the isles of our grocery stores?
And so, I began my first personal experiment in astrology. At the end of each day I would read the day's description in my Sun sign book and compare it to the events of the day. My findings were inconclusive. Some days were what might be described as accurate, some were not. The fact that some predictions were right-on certainly demanded further attention.
Either astrology was true or it wasn't. As simple as that. Right? Well, not exactly. First, my understanding of astrology was limited to the personality descriptions of the Sun signs. I had no idea how anyone arrived at any particular daily prediction.
Even more importantly, my understanding of what it means to be true or real was based on the simple dichotomy of true versus false, yes versus no, black versus white, right versus wrong. My understanding of what is true, what is real, and what is truth was about to shift dramatically. Not just a shift, but a paradigm shift--a change in my basic assumptions about what is, a radical change in thinking, a significant change from one worldview to another. And not just one shift! But one shift, then another, then another, and then another. I am happy to say that I still undergo dramatic shifts. I dare say that making such shifts is the true purpose of life.
I can't remember a time that I was not avidly interested in the power of the mind. In addition to being exposed to the hype in the media, my parents and grandparents talked freely about the power of prayer and positive thinking, spiritual healing, life-after-death, hypnosis, ESP, and parapsychology.
On the other hand, from a very early age I was also no stranger to life's problems and their accompanying emotions of anxiety, stress, and depression. By the age of thirteen, I had read Ainslise Meares' Relief without Drugs, Ralph Wynn's Hypnotism Made Easy, William C. Gibson's Therapeutic Self-Hypnosis, Richard L. Hittleman's Richard Hittleman's Introduction to Yoga, Yogi William Zorn's Yoga for the Mind, and Maxwell Maltz's Psycho-Cybernetics and his Creative Living for Today. I learned relaxation, meditation, hypnosis, self-hypnosis, and raja yoga.
From there, I studied psychology, psychotherapy, and astrology. Eventually, I got the materials I needed to calculate a horoscope. I discovered the American Federation of Astrologers, became a lifetime member, and got certified in natal astrology.
I studied witchcraft and became best friends with a teenage witchNancy, not Sabrina. I guess Christine O'Donnell said it best, "I dabbled in witchcraft. But I didn't join a coven." I couldn't find any covens to join. Maybe Christine couldn't either. Unlike Christine, I can't say "I am not a witch." Sorry, Christine, once a witch, always a witch. I would have been found guilty at the Salem witch trials, if the zeitgeist of the time would have allowed them to acknowledge the existence of male witches.
I studied mysticism and could invoke mystical states of unitive consciousness at will. I soon seemed to outgrow the United Methodists. I waited a while for them to catch up, but they didn't. I read Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health and visited one of the two local Christian Science churches. I was turned off by their rigidity and by their unwavering dependence on Mrs. Eddy.
I had studied the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and many less well-known Transcendentalists. Now there was a religion I could back. Many of the Transcendentalists had been Unitarian ministers. They rejected the Unitarian church because of its conservative doctrines, and they had very little positive to say about Unitarianism. However, since there were no Transcendentalist churches, I thought I would try the Unitarian Universalist Church and go from there.
At the age of sixteen I visited the local Unitarian Universalist Churchcalled the Universalist Unitarian Church at the time. The UU Churchas they called themselvesheld many surprises for me. First, I discovered that my maternal grandfather used to be a member and that many of his relatives were active members there. Second, the church seemed to have a disproportional number of Gay members. And third, the modern, liberal UU churches had changed so much since Emerson's time that it made Transcendentalism look conservative and orthodox. I'm not sure whether Emerson would be elated or appalled by the new UU. Hopefully the former.
I started attending the UU Church's monthly open houses. At one such open house, I happened to walk into a room where the group talking about psychic phenomena. My spiritual growth was about to increase exponentially. I was about to enter the Spiritual journey freeway. To use a term popular back then, I was about to blow my mind! There I was in the midst of astrologers, theosophists, psychics, yogis, and college professors. I learned that two nonprofit organizations were soon to form. Oneto incorporate at a later date--would become the Illinois Federation of Astrologers.
The otherExpanding Human Awarenesswas the brainchild of several psychics, ministers, and physicians living in central Illinois. The purposes of Expanding Human Awareness (EHA) were to introduce the general public to topics like ESP, parapsychology, spiritual healing, life after death, and reincarnation through national and international speakers and to provide opportunities for members to learn and develop their latent abilities. I joined EHA, attended lectures and workshops, and gave some.
I learned of Peoria's Spiritualist Church of Harmony. I attended church there and eventually became a member. Later, either directly or indirectly from my connections with EHA, I took advanced lessons in hypnosis, studied graphoanalysis, and learned of the Science of Mind, the Unity Church of Christianity, Silent Unity, and the Daily Word.
The greatest gift I ever received from EHA occurred after a lecture one evening. I met two angelic beings disguised as middle-aged women. They told me of a "meditation group" that met in the home of one of the angels. They lived in a small town about thirty minutes away. Their group grew out of their interest in a past life regression class given by a chiropractor who was also a member of EHA. They were studying the A Search for God materials, published by the late Edgar Cayce's Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE). Their group met once a week. Attendance averaged around eight each week. Once again, my spiritual growth was about to increase exponentially.
