My Journey

My earliest memory is of being an infant, sitting in a field of green grass. The sun is setting and everything is golden. I am holding a little yellow baseball bat and it is covered with gnats. I remember staring in awe of the contrast between the black gnats and the yellow bat and all of a sudden there was Oneness. I remember that scene so clearly and the non-dual absorption of that moment.

This was to be the first of many mystical experiences that would later shape the course of my life. I was raised in a Christian household and every Sunday I would accompany my parents and sister to Church. I remember in the beginning I felt very obedient and followed along because it was what my parents were doing. But when I got a little older I began to have experiences through prayer and worship that would bring me into ecstatic Union with God. These experiences would last anywhere from a few hours to a few days and then I would return to a more dualistic state of consciousness. What I remember feeling in those days was the incredible power of the Love of God and of Jesus.

At this point in my life, I was a young teenager, 14 or 15 and I was having these incredibly potent experiences of Love. But in-between these experiences I remember being fully immersed in the world of separation. Consequently there was still great suffering in my life. As I grew up I lost touch with the ecstatic Love experiences and when I was around the age of 19 or 20 I began to drink and party with my friends. This was a time of experimentation and numbing, as there was pain that I had not yet resolved in my life and it was all too easy to numb out by using cannabis and alcohol. I also turned my back on my Christian up-bringing as I became aware of the hypocrisy in the Church. I remember being faced with this question, “If Christ is this all-loving Being and taught his disciples about unconditional love, then why do Christians have so much judgement and condemnation for the rest of the world? Why don’t Christians love in the way that Christ loved?” All of a sudden it didn’t add up for me. The Church, though it supplied the context and foundation for me to have the experience of ecstatic Love, eventually felt like a barrier to me expanding more fully into my authentic self.

Ramakrishna, Kali, and Zen

When I was in my early 20’s I began to have the energetic experiences of a kundalini awakening. This is the vital life force, or shakti, within the subtle body that is seen as pure light. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and there was a Ramakrishna center close by. Ever since Swami Vivekananda arrived in Chicago to deliver his speech at the World’s Parliament of Religions in 1893 the presence of Ramakrishna and The Vedanta Society has been steadily growing there. When I arrived at the newly constructed Ramakrishna center I fell in love once again with the spiritual life. I purchased “The Gospel of Ramakrishna” and this became my new guide. Ramakrishna was a fascinating spiritual personality. He was totally devoted to God in the form of Kali, the Divine Mother of the Universe. He would drift into ecstatic states frequently, multiple times per day, often with tears of bliss streaming down his face. This little man from India had a huge impact on my life at this time. I began to learn meditation and would devote large chunks of my day to quietly sitting. I would chant the name of Kali over and over in my heart. It wasn’t long before I began to feel the presence of the Divine Mother in my life. I would experience the same ecstatic Love states that I had experienced earlier in my life when I was still an child growing up in the church. However, these experiences wouldn’t last long and I would plummet back into the world of separation and suffering. I became a vegetarian and made many changes in my life but I was still in the habit of partying with my friends and using substances to numb the pain that I was still feeling. In short, I wasn’t grounded and I hadn’t learned how to heal the trauma in the emotional and mental bodies.

At the age of 22 I fell in love with the work and writing of Carl Jung. I realized I needed healing and Carl Jung’s approach seemed to speak to me in a way that made sense. I devoted the next year