Seeking again now, my route to “A Training course in Miracles” possibly all began in 1969 when I acknowledged Jesus my personalized Lord and Savior, below the influence of the Campus Crusade for Christ. Even so, after joining a Christian brotherhood of aspiring monks, in which I was daily quizzed on how many Bible verses I had memorized and could recite verbatim, I was entirely puzzled by it all. Their variation of actuality just did not sit well with me. I felt like a parrot of Bible verses, that I did not even begin to understand, or the town crier that no one desired to hear. Jesus would demonstrate me much more, significantly more.
As divine synchronicity would have it, I ingested a hallucinogen that resulted in a near death experience the day soon after Xmas, 1970. When I was in the black void, with only the consciousness that “I Am”, George Harrison’s tune My Sweet Lord began actively playing. That was my voice singing to God, not George’s! Quickly a brilliant white light started appearing out of the darkness, as my soul sang “I actually want to see you Lord”. Then any individual commenced to arise out of the light. This Holy A single oscillated amongst masculine and female. As I might been praying to Jesus, I believed it may well be him, but with out a beard. I began crying from the depths of my soul, as the Holy A single communicated telepathically into my heart. I understood this Becoming to be nothing at all but pure love. Then acim was in excess of. I was shot back again into my entire body, hearing the words to a new song telling me “it is been a long time coming, it truly is heading to be a long time long gone.” How accurate that has been.
A year later, I noticed the cover of Autobiography of a Yogi. It was Paramahansa Yogananda who had occur to me! Following arrived conference Baba Ram Dass, who confirmed that I was not nuts and said that Yogananda experienced appeared to numerous youthful spiritual seekers on medication. He also autographed my duplicate of Be Here Now. My next decade was expended becoming an aspiring yogi and practising Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship lessons and workout routines, chanting, meditating and getting initiation into Kriya yoga. Yogananda’s path and linage of gurus introduced the much needed clarity for me to realize Jesus and Christianity much better.
Yogananda also showed me the important reality behind the oneness of all religions. And he introduced me to Babaji, the Mahavatar who despatched him to The us again in the 1920s. At any time given that I heard the identify Babaji, I knew I knew Him. He and Jesus function jointly, powering the scenes, in the cosmic plan of issues. And Babaji was to be the subsequent action in my ongoing non secular evolution. Even so, I did not know at this position that He had supposedly manifested a human body yet again and was residing in the modest village of Haidakhan, in northern India. That would appear later, alongside with the thriller and myth of this recent manifestation.
After listening to Bhagavan Das sing, I bought a dotara and started chanting mantras to God daily. This simple, ancient two- stringed instrument is easy to enjoy and lets one particular adhere to the drone sound into silence. At this point, I purchased my personal spot in the woods and met a male who’d lived with Babaji. He carried out a Vedic hearth ceremony that Babaji experienced taught him to initiate my new abode. I questioned and grilled him frequently, inquiring if this new Babaji was the exact same entity Yogananda experienced written about. Yes, 1 and the identical but peoples egos even now issue His real identity. Babaji’s new Kriya yoga was the path of real truth, simplicity and really like while performing karma yoga- perform – and retaining one’s mind on God, through repetition of the historical mantra Om Namaha Shivaya.
Babaji said that this mantra on your own was a lot more strong than a thousand atomic bombs and His 1-800 quantity. I began at this point seriously performing japa, or the repetition of the mantra on 108 rudraksha beads, to get this vibration into my sub consciousness. I also learned many ways to chant it on my dotara. With all of this heading on, I purchased “A Course in Miracles” and started the day-to-day classes right away. I attempted to make feeling of the Textual content but received nowhere every single sentence bogged me down and experienced to be re-study more than too several times to assimilate. I was just too younger, I informed myself. I was thirty-3. I might deal with this Textual content later, someday, possibly.
Then right after a year of being married, our home burns down- a actual karmic hearth ceremony. In the ashes, untouched by the hearth, was a photo of Babaji and His cymbals from Haidakhan. Speak about miracles! Subsequent, was the unforeseen news that we have a little one coming, right after getting rid of almost everything? My relationship started to dissolve speedily soon after I fell 20 ft off a roof, breaking my physique in twelve places. Surviving death, I was set back into university for two several years to be retrained, even though my ex-wife and son remaining for the Southwest. This is when all of my abandonment issues led to severe ingesting on your own. Soon after graduation, I left for India to see Babaji’s ashram, as He experienced presently left His physical entire body yet again, and to pray for support with my daily life in the most religious country on earth. I attended the 1995 Kumbha Mela festival with ten million other people and lo and behold, who need to appear? It was Babaji, asking me if I was possessing exciting. Sure, but I could not speak to answer Him! Then He disappeared again into the crowd, leaving me blown absent. Returning point out side, I finished up subsequent my ex- wife and son to the Southwest, exactly where my subsequent stage was peyote meetings with the Native Americans for several several years to arrive.
Every little thing I’d go through and researched in the System was evident on the drugs inside of that tipi. God Is. I discovered much more in a single night time than I experienced in several years of learning metaphysical textbooks. But I failed to practice all I’d discovered and I allow my depressed ego, alcohol and abandonment issues just take me closer to death’s really doorway. Nonetheless, as destiny, karma and prayers would have it, I ended up in jail for two.five many years on an aggravated DUI, instead of lifeless, the place I stumbled upon the Courses’ Handbook for Instructors in our library. Shortly, I experienced the complete guide sent in cost-free to prisoners and was reintroduced to Jesus once more, with all the time I needed to research every single term of that lengthy textual content. Right after twenty many years, I have to be previous ample to get it now! In time and with the support of the Training course, I was last but not least in a position to forgive myself for the strange existence my moi experienced created. I did the daily classes once more, striving to see the encounter of Christ within each inmate. That was not an straightforward 1. But I left prison a transformed, free of charge sober male, significantly better for the encounter and with a initial draft ebook about it all beneath my belt. Nowadays, I have 8 many years of sobriety below my belt and my e-book Still Singing, In some way won the fall Pinnacle E-book Accomplishment Award. This is a quite condensed version of my tale- an odyssey of one particular soul’s karma.