Usually when I read a book or an article, I want to know something about the author. I want an answer to my inherent question, “why might this interest me?” My personal story is not dramatic like those of some writers of spiritual wisdom. It starts out with the normal questioning of a young person. However, for me, this questioning started more than fifty years ago. It was a time of great skepticism of anything “different” and non-religious.
This questioning period is the province of youth and mine was not serious, nor was it atypical, in any way. Then a series of personal experiences suddenly challenged my understanding of physical, spiritual and religious thought. Everything that my Judeo-Christian, Middle West culture had taught me was now in doubt.
I wanted to reconcile this dissonance, so I began reading. I read everything I could find on spiritual wisdom and the nature of physical reality and I became even more confused. This was an era of Newtonian Physics, not, quite yet, Quantum Physics which might have helped me in my understanding in some small way.
In the meantime, life went on. I married; I had children. Then one day (through a trusted source — I emphasize this for a reason) I was introduced to a man with kind eyes. It was a classic story of “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” This meeting began my serious training, more than forty years ago now, in one of the ancient mystery schools of spiritual wisdom that have existed for more than two thousand years.
I no longer work within that mystery school but my serious training continues. I am still bound by the oath I took then, but times have changed. More formerly esoteric information is openly available all the time for the spiritual seeker. It is my belief that once we begin this mystic’s journey, and when we do so with clear intent, it is a permanent path we trod. There can be times of respite, a “time out”, but it is my belief that there is no turning back.
I believe that the Hero’s Journey, Journey of the Mystic, or the following of the spiritual pathway is an evolutionary journey we all must take sooner or later in our evolutionary process. Contrary to popular belief, this journey should not contradict, nor deny, any religion or philosophical thought. Instead, it should encourage a student to look deeper in order to broaden their understanding.
I believe the Zen saying that a Master is just somebody who started before you. It is, therefore, my intent to help you understand this journey and to discover what you will need to know, and to do, to facilitate your process. I am writing this in order to, hopefully, help you make sense of your own story.
Say not, “I have found the truth”, but rather, “I have found a truth”.
— Kahlil Gibran