Did you ever wake up one morning, look at yourself in the
mirror, and ask "where did this life come from?" That actually happened to me
in 1993. Why 1993? No reason other than it was my time to begin "waking up."
While many good things were happening in my life, I wasn't happy
and I didn't feel like I really knew who I was or where I was going in life. Being successful in a career sense wasn't enough!
The deep questions about life burning in my gut since childhood were still unanswered. I had to know who I was. The self I
sought to know was my "spiritual self."
I began to look seriously at my life, what it was all about, and
how I was and was not creating a meaningful life for myself and those around me.
As a young child, I was aware of having a "spiritual calling," meaning that I needed to know
myself in a spiritual sense and that spiritual matters were going to be more important to me than many people. As I grew older,
I grew increasingly frustrated and disillusioned with Christian fundamentalism (the Nazarene Church). The God that I knew
as a child was a "God of fear" and not a "God of love." By the time I graduated high school, I had stopped going to church,
believing in Jesus Christ, or seeing where God had any place in my life. Gradually, I re-opened
the "spiritual box" and restored my belief in God, and yet I found it hard to call myself a "Christian."
In the early 1990s, I turned to Native American wisdom and spirituality for spiritual answers. In my judgment, Indians were close to the Earth, and
therefore close to God. I have been drawn to the Indian path since childhood. Through arrowhead hunting and reading, I cultivated
an "inner sense" about the Native world at an early age. These interests were so powerful that they led me to major in Anthropology
(North American Indians) in college. During the past decade, I have worked as a consultant to several Indian tribes across
the United States.
From my Native American studies and a personal friend Derk Janssen, I learned about Astrology, which may seem to be "out there" to many people, but used properly it can
offer astonishing insights into the world and our personal lives. Astrology introduces the concept that we are not born "blank
slates," that is we have an authentic self that relates to the larger Universe. This concept is helpful to me.
I find many of the principles of the Unitarian Universalist Church to work for me. I like the fact that poetry, literature, and ideas from various
spiritual belief systems are integrated into the UUA philosophy.
My journey then led me to aspects of Buddhism. Five years ago, I started a meditation practice with the help of a friend
Richard Weiner, who is a Buddhist teacher here in Northeast Ohio. Since then, my studies
in meditation and Buddhism have been helped by my reunion with my childhood friend, Dan Shimp, a Buddhist teacher in Santa Fe.
These are several concepts from Buddhism that I find attractive. For one, I like Buddhism's
"cut to the chase" approach to finding reality and Truth. I also like the concepts of compassionate wisdom and loving kindness
toward all sentient beings in the Universe.
In the past year, I decided that I need to impose some discipline on my spiritual studies.
This led me to seek "higher education" through an organized program of study that exposed me to wise and caring teachers.
Currently, I am working on a Masters Degree in Consciousness Studies and Transformational Psychology at the University of Philosophical Research in Los Angeles. Why this program and not others? Mainly because of the high quality faculty, which includes some of the world's leading spiritual, philosophical, and scientific scholars and teachers.
Each of these spiritual "systems" offers me a "way of seeing"
reality that I find helpful. Some say these "ways of seeing" are a long way from the storefront Nazarene Church in Martins Ferry, Ohio that I belonged to as a child. They're right.
It's vitally important to follow our heart in life. We spend too
much time listening to the endless stream of thoughts that clutter our minds. My heart carried me in directions I couldn't
conceive of at the start of my journey.
It requires an enormous amount of courage to listen to our hearts,
which take us to places we need to go that science (so far) knows little about. Many people are unwilling to leave their "safe
zone" in life, and as a result they continue to suffer with under-explored and unhappy lives. My advice is simple: "Don't
be one of them. Follow your heart."
Along the way, I discovered an interesting metaphysical concept called the law of attraction, which offers an explanation of why we do or do not attract certain people
and things into our lives. Like most people, I wanted to know myself better and feel more joy and meaning in my life.
Over time, I have become much more aware of "how I am"
shapes what is attracted into my life. Using this understanding, I created a life vision statement for myself. Download my full life vision statement. (PDF format)
Hear
the bell? If you don't, turn up your computer speakers. It's a Tibetan bell. Listen carefully and let the bell center
your mind in the present.
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