PRESENTING CHAPTER TWO - ON THE WAY TO THE TRAIN - PART ONE, MY SPIRITUAL AND LIFE JOURNEY - THE FINDING GOD ON THE TRAIN STORY BLOG BOOK - THE CRYSTAL PATH - QUEST FOR A POSITIVE, PERSONAL, AND CONTEMPLATIVE SPIRITUALITY

 

 

PRESENTING THE BLOG BOOK

 

CHAPTER TWO - PART ONE - MY SPIRITUAL AND LIFE JOURNEY 

 

FEATURING THE FINDING GOD ON THE TRAIN BLOG STORY

 

NOTES ON

ENLIGHTENMENT -

 

Quest For A Positive, Personal, 

And Contemplative Spirituality

 

THE CRYSTAL PATH

 

BY G. BRYANT CRONK

 

 

_{___________________________________}

PART ONE  MY SPIRITUAL AND LIFE JOURNEY

CHAPTER TWO - ON THE WAY TO THE TRAIN

CHAPTER HIGHLIGHTS

 

SUCH IS CONSCIOUSNESS–MEDITATION GUIDANCE

OPENING THOUGHTS

DEREK WALCOTT’S POEM, LOVE AFTER LOVE - VIDEO

https://youtu.be/n_3QbH_aNmc

FLOATING BACK ON TOP –

YOUTUBE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL BY AMOS LEE

YouTube Video Provided By Universal Music Group

https://youtu.be/ICAImToCstI

LOOKING FOR SOMETHING

SURVIVING THE EARLY YEARS

FEATURING RAGING LIKE A BULL – POEM

NAVIGATING THE LATE 1960s

SIMON AND GARFUNKEL – BRIDGE OVER TROUBLE WATER (LIVE 1969)

https://youtu.be/GYKJuDxYr3I

A SIXTIES MEMORY

PEOPLE GET READY THE IMPRESSIONS HTTPS://YOUTU.BE/L04YM7-BWBG

VANILLA FUDGE PEOPLE, GET READY HTTPS://YOUTU.BE/KTEMRDYSHHO 

EARLY LOVE AND CONVERSION, GRADUATE BUSINESS

SCHOOL AND MY EARLY ADULT YEARS

MY FIRST CAREER DECISION - MUSIC OR BUSINESS?

Pat Martino Trio – Full House Published 2014 

https://youtu.be/IzW8jzICbm8

CHAPTER TWO – HIGHLIGHTS CONTINUED

GRADUATE BUSINESS SCHOOL AND MY MID-TWENTIES

CAREER DEVELOPMENT - MY FIRST MANAGEMENT JOB

THE WHARTON STREET KITCHEN

ISLAND BREAK

RETURN TO THE HIGH-TECH LIFE

WHAT ABOUT THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY?

FLASHING SATELLITES IN THE NIGHT SKY

NEXT STOP HEALTHCARE?

CLOSING NOTE ON ENLIGHTENMENT

FEATURING THE MAGIC OF INTENT - MEDITATION GUIDANCE

CLOSING AFFIRMATION

FEATURING CONFIDENCE - AFFIRMATION

 

___________________________________

PART ONE MY SPIRITUAL AND LIFE JOURNEY

 

CHAPTER TWO - ON THE WAY TO THE TRAIN

 

SUCH IS CONSCIOUSNESS

I face the magic alone, standing solitary beneath

a lonely street lamp.

I see only the illuminated world and struggle

to adjust my vision to peer into the darkness.

This oasis of light protects me secures me

like a warm blanket on a winter’s night.

I search the street signs for an indication,

a name, a marker, or any visual identification,

label, or framework.

Failing, I ask, "where am I?"

Here and there is a response from

the hollow darkness.

I move quickly to the voice, and the light moves

with me. I run, and the light runs with me.

Like a spotlight chasing a spastic actor

who has forgotten his cues – the light follows.

Such is consciousness, a comforting light 

in an unlit world.

NOE BY G. 1.29.2000

OPENING THOUGHTS

Chapter Two, titled On The Way To The Train - makes up the second chapter of Part One - My Spiritual And Life Journey, inspired by Ann’s suggestion that readers would want to know more about me after they completed Chapter One. In the process of writing this chapter, I have gotten to meet myself again, and borrowing a phrase from poet Derek Walcott’s poem, Love After Love, offered below, I have greeted myself arriving at my own door, and I have had a chance to feast on my life.

The time will come when with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was yourself.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who had loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

 

For all the G.s I have met along the way—from the little G. who withstood the firestorm of my early life to the adolescent G. who conquered fear and plowed on to become the adult G. who kept searching for the genuine—authentic G. when it would have been easier to give in or give up. I commend you all for your contributions to the ever-evolving but very happy spiritual G., who loves you all and has had the privilege to tell our story.

I often ask myself the question, what have I learned from this? Here is my response. Three lessons seem to be obvious to me.

1. I was fortunate to have survived my childhood and have lived the life I have lived.
2. Being a character myself, I am fascinated by the characters that I have met along the way and enjoy telling their stories.
3. I have been constantly searching for something that has kept me evolving and growing.

I believe I have found it, and this is it. So, for all who wondered what I was doing on the way to the train.

FLOATING BACK ON TOP

I keep on livin’, to keep from cryin’. 

I keep on dreamin’, to keep from dyin’.

I keep on trying, I ain't gonna stop.

Get right down to the bottom of the barrel

and float back on top.      

Bottom Of The Barrel By Amos Lee

YouTube Video Provided By Universal Music Group

https://youtu.be/ICAImToCstI

Listen On Spotify 

https://open.spotify.com/track/3FLYHWXkojNtBSqB7MDslh

Preview and Purchase on iTunes

https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/amos-lee/45539761

Or purchase from the Amos Lee Website

As I look back on my life, the one central theme that comes to mind is the word “buoyancy,” defined by Webster as “the ability or tendency to float or the power to keep something afloat.” So, I would have to say I have had a “buoyant life.”  Many times I have gotten right down to the bottom of the barrel, as my favorite singer-songwriter Amos Lee aptly expresses in the verse of his song, Bottom of the Barrel quoted above, and by some miracle, I have ended up floating right back on top.  Overall, I have lived my life just the way that I pleased and made the decisions that seemed right at the time, with no one else to blame or congratulate but myself. I have lived my life, so when I face the final moments of life, I will have no regrets about having not lived. 

God knows I have not always made the right decisions and have, at times, negatively impacted my family. My kids would call themselves “Shifters,” a term they made up for the many lifestyles they lived as I experimented with jobs, careers, and life. My kids felt that every few years, they would be in a new life created by a new career move or dream I was pursuing. I sincerely thank them for their flexibility.  

This shifting also affected my love relationships, so I have been no stranger to divorce throughout my adult years. Spiritually, I was also shifting—moving from my early commitment to the Methodist ministry to the atheist/agnostic focus of my youth, to my conversion to Judaism, to my lifelong interest in Zen Buddhism and Sufism, to spending ten years as an Episcopalian, and finally to my current New Thought approach.

LOOKING FOR SOMETHING

As I take even a closer look, especially looking at what I have written in this chapter, I find that beneath the “buoyancy” that saved me from the “shifting” in my life, I was constantly looking for something.  As I write this, the tagline from the Eurhythmics rhythmically enchanting hit song of the 1980’s - Sweet Dreams: “Everybody’s Looking For Something” is playing out in my mind. I think about my years of “looking for something.” I was never sure what I was missing.

By my late forties, when my searching still left me empty, I tried to fill that void with therapy, prescription drugs, and food that I ate until I weighed over 275 lbs. and could barely walk. One reason I wanted to share my story, is because I know others who are also out there “looking for something,” and don’t understand why all the material things and success they have acquired, will not satisfy them. I believe that the something I was looking for, and many of us are looking for, is simply a loving God. This book, blog, and my life are now about helping others form their own connection with God, and hopefully, finding what they have been missing.

I also hope that this chapter answers the “Who Am I” question I originally presented in Chapter One, giving the reader a sense of my unique spiritual and life journey. To do this, I break the chapter into four main life - timing sections. I call the first section, the “Early Years,” which were life-defining as all childhoods are, and includes a cast of characters that greatly impacted my early life, for better or worse, and comprises some of my most cherished memories. 

At the same time, I have felt compelled to briefly address the abusive side of my childhood, because it has, and continues to, impact my life. I have tried to handle it in a poem, marking this poem so it can be easily skipped. Next, “Navigating The Late 1960s” is the title of the second section, jumping back in time to the 1960s with me at the age of fourteen, just beginning to navigate through my teenage years and the late sixties, and then slips into the early 1970s, to cover my initial college years. 

The third section focuses on me in my twenties, and is titled “Conversion, Graduate Business School, and The Young Adult Years.” And finally, the closing section, which covers my adult life up through my mid 50's, which I call “High Tech, Island Break, and Mid-Life.” My current life is not included, because it has been covered by the previous chapter, and will continue to be updated in the remainder of the book.

Again, I ask you to join me on the train as we go in reverse and travel back in time on a brief journey through the 1950s, the late 1960s, and beyond, where my life and career highs merged with the spiritual searching to create an intricate backdrop, and preparation for my role today. All aboard!

THE EARLY YEARS

Let’s start at the beginning. There in the New Thought and metaphysical movement feel we pick our parents and life situations before taking human form to experience a predetermined set of challenges. Then, by overcoming these challenges, we can progress along our spiritual path. If so, as I have joked, I was the product of a cosmic bait and switch, where my previously ordered parents morphed quickly after birth into wholly different creatures.  So, as you can see, I am still struggling with accepting this - you pick your parents and family members for spiritual growth - concept.

My mother, a stunningly beautiful young woman from Denison, Texas, who may have had bad luck with men, or a penchant for exotic bad boys, was already divorced from her Native American husband, who was serving time in prison; the father of my half-brother. Then, she met my father who was serving in the Air Force and was a hefty, charming, humorous, six foot three fun-loving guy, who everyone half-jokingly called Tiny. My mother was from the south, my father was the son of a Philadelphia engineer. My father married my mother in Texas and brought his wife and half Native American stepson back to his northern parents, and all hell broke loose.

Although my mother hated Philadelphia as much as my father’s parents hated her, she recovered from a nervous breakdown. She gave birth to my older brother, my older sister, me, and my younger brother and we all lived in a row house in Philadelphia with my stepbrother. My father, who drove a truck for a living, and although a bitter disappointment to his father, went on to read a book a week, becoming an expert on the civil war, and all wars, in fact, loved movies, loved to draw, and when not in a rage, was quite normal. My mother became a housewife, opening up a daycare business in our home so she could have her own money and would always have people around for safety.

My mother was the resident psychologist for the neighborhood, deeply loved by all who met her, and as a result, my home was always filled to overflowing with an abundance of unique characters. Many were my mother’s friends; others, stopped by to deliver and pick up their children; some were just neighbors, but all sought my mother’s loving and sensitive advice on life.  

There was the former Catholic priest and gay bar owner, my mother’s best friend. Then, with her two lovely daughters, the former Olympic swimming hopeful, whose Bank president husband would periodically suffer from amnesia, only to be found wandering around in distant cities after extensive searches. Others like Aunt Peggy a highly paid Executive Secretary, who was raising her sister’s two boys, as her sister dealt with the ravages of alcoholism. The two boys lived with us all week, being picked up by their aunt for the weekend. After a few years, the boys seemed like siblings. And then there was our neighbor from up the street, who grew up in Nazi Germany, married her America soldier husband after the war, came to America, but never fully gained a broader perspective on Jews or human rights. However, she was more than generous and kind to my mother and our family. 

I grew up standing around the kitchen table exposed to these strong women, along with a supporting cast of other characters that I loved and learned from daily. God willing, someday I will document in a book, so I never lose their deeply human stories and the flavor of the times and their lives.

Although my mother has transitioned, she is to this day the kindest, most loving, gentle soul that I have encountered in life, who lived and overcame an extremely abusive husband, and a great deal of heartache.

My mother had much to deal with in the 1950s, paramount was my half-brother, who as a teenager was a magnet for every aspiring criminal in the neighborhood. His friends all wore black tee shirts and jeans with chains coming out of their pockets and listened to early rock and roll, did drugs of some sort, played bongos, planned robberies, and hung out each night in the basement of my house.

More characters for me, including the lovable Big John, who was six foot six, feared by all as the local loan shark’s collection agent and enforcer. Yet, kind to me and the other kids, and my brother's best friend. But, of course, a leading character was my brother’s occasional girlfriend who had epilepsy, a biker type with the “Property of the Warlocks,” a local motorcycle gang, tattooed across her rear end, which she was fond of showing all who asked, or some, like me, who did not.

One of my earliest memories is of my mother walking in the front door of our house with the morning Philadelphia Bulletin, our local newspaper in hand, groaning and bursting into tears, falling to her knees and screaming, “God, why.” On the front page was a story featuring my half-brother's late-night bowling alley safe cracking caper with Big John, which had gone wrong, ending in a high-speed chase where my brother jumps out of a car, going 60 MPH.

Later explained to me that it was the result of some high-speed miscommunication. Luckily for my brother, he was quite handsome and personable minimized his jail time, and upon release, headed to the West Coast for a few years. I also learned an important life lesson; crime does not pay, and most criminals are not smart.

But it was my half-brother, who returned home from California years later, who was the first to expose me to the folk music of Peter, Paul, and Mary, and Phil Ochs, along with the metaphysical and spiritual world straight from California. Since my brother also returned home with an addiction to diet pills, I spent long nights with him learning about Extra Sensory Perception (ESP), the healing powers and writings of Edgar Cayce, how to successfully perform Astral Projection, Nostradamus, and his predictions for the end of the world, the Freemasons, and the religious order of the Rosicrucians. I would listen for hours, read all the discussed books, and come back for more each night. I will always be grateful to my brother for the time he took to offer me this education into a world I would only fully reconnect with over thirty-five years later.

SURVIVING THE EARLY YEARS

As far as I knew, all was well regarding abuse until I was fiive. I need to tell this story because it was a defining moment in my life and my sister's life and set the stage for our abusive childhood. It also underscores the fact that we are all faced with challenges in life to live through and hopefully survive. We emerge from these challenges, as either a victim or a victor, or like me, somewhere in-between.

I wrote the following poetic depiction when I realized that I had a Pituitary Brain Tumor, and I needed to face my unresolved and unforgiven past again. I was walking around thinking I had resolved all these issues years ago with therapy and anti-depressants. But, unfortunately, I had not, and, I believe, the physical issues I now have, partially come from these unresolved childhood events. I think these unresolved issues can eventually kill us, and, if possible, we need to find a way to forgive those involved, cleanse our souls, and understand how we can perceive our victory in these events. If this is too much for you, I have italicized this section so you can skip it, if desired.

I feel this poetic depiction will give you the flavor of this childhood memory, when during a bright sunny afternoon, as a tiny boy of five, with long blond curly hair, I teamed with my eight-year-old sister, and actually saved my mother’s life. We won that day and were sort of victors, but the fight went on for many years. 

RAGING LIKE A BULL 

How does a person get so overtaken that they violently

rage against life

As a child, clearly pure, the monster would appear inside

my father and he became the full fury of hell on earth,

ripping at life, beating, threatening, hurting, scarring,

bashing

Moving to destroy all – life, balance, future, peace -

a monster -

who just hours before spoke peacefully – lovingly.

The hellfire and damnation exploding across the

faces of tiny children watching the tornado of

hopelessness and despair unleash a horror of pain.

In these moments, all time stopped – too fearful to tick on –

between giant punches, my mother’s face grew blue,

then red as the monster tore away at her life –

to extinguish her existence.

My sister and I learned to fight the monster but living

in fear –

we prepared for the next visit to madness.

POEM BY G. 

I am a survivor of an abusive household, which has shaped my life. I made a decision early in my life that I would prevail and succeed despite the terror at home. Unfortunately, my sister was not so lucky and never recovered to live a normal life. There was not enough therapy, drugs, or God to clear away the horrors that she endured, including sexual abuse, until one day, she sat facing a table of pills, and the horror was silenced forever.

The loving father, who turned into a monster on occasion, did not do much to support my concept of a judgmental, punishing God existing in heaven, and I believe it led me on a search for the loving God, which I have found so many years later.

NAVIGATING THE LATE 1960s

Simon and Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water (Live 1969)

https://youtu.be/GYKJuDxYr3I

“And like a bridge over troubled waters I will lay me down,” and I am watching and listening to Simon and Garfunkel introduce their new song at the Arena Theatre in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, my hometown, and it is December 1969. I am seventeen, my hair is long, and I am high, but as I listen to these two poets of the sixties sing, Paul at the grand piano and Art at the microphone in the spotlight, they touch my heart, and I fight back my tears for fear my friends will notice. Finally, the song ends, the crowd erupts with a standing ovation to this hymn of love, hope, and compassion, and I think of God.

I have spent my life wrestling with my spiritual self, and I have spent my time in the desert; often, the demons won. Since I was a toddler, my mother said I suffered from “Divine Discontent” because I was always searching for something that was just beyond my reach. When I look back, I think it was an accurate description of my spiritual condition.  

I was a Boy Scout, an extremely religious teenager with a God and Country Award (the highest scouting medal for religious service), and the president of my Methodist Youth Group. I had already delivered a twenty-minute sermon on the life of Paul to my five-hundred-member church congregation and had decided to make a career commitment to the Methodist ministry.  This should have been the end of the story, except that life in an abusive household started to take its toll. I think that it was the two worlds, with God on one side and the devil at home on the other, that started to wear away at my concept and belief in God.

Along with this, I would have to point to the late 1960s, with its multiple enticements stemming from a whole new consciousness and way of thinking, including the standard sex, drugs, and rock and roll. In my early years of high school, I was on the soccer, fencing, and tennis teams, the Stage Crew, and a member of my high school fraternity, Sigma Kappa Phi.

But by the time I was sixteen, I was also hanging out in Rittenhouse Square (the main hippie hangout in Philly), attending rock concerts at the Electric Factory on the weekends, and throwing myself into the radical thinking of the late sixties with the same intensity I had followed all the religious rules and practices previously. And in short order, the floodgates of late sixties opportunity opened for me and I co-founded an underground student newspaper in Philadelphia, won a prestigious national student journalism award for one of my articles, began a coffee/rock house with my friends in an old wine basement, and became a noted protester of the Vietnam war and anything else worth protesting,

After entering the local community college at seventeen, I became a vocal atheist who took every religion course. To give you some flavor of the time, one day in the morning, I marched against the Vietnam War with the Young Socialists. After the march, I headed over to hear Guru Bawa, who had a spiritual center in Philadelphia, talk about enlightenment. I ended the day working at my local food cooperative, stacking the shelves and wrapping cheese. Of course, my friends said I only followed Guru Bawa because they served great Indian food, which was, I must admit, partially true.  Nevertheless, it was a great time, and I am thankful I survived. 

A SIXTIES MEMORY

Ah, the sixties. To fully capture the flavor of the times, I would like to share one of my favorite musical experiences that shows how wonderful and strange it was growing up in the late sixties. I am sixteen, and my friends from high school and I have tickets close to the stage, in this rather small venue by today’s standards, to see The Doors, who would headline the concert, with Vanilla Fudge opening the show. Wow, I was going to get to see Jim Morrison and The Doors, and I was overcome with excitement.

With the smoke of both legal and illicit substances floating like massive clouds in the dim light of the hall, Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, brushed up against me on his way to the stage as he came out after, what at that time was his expected long delay, actually being held erect by several massive security guards, who gingerly placed him on the stage.

But for me, the real highlight of the night was the Vanilla Fudge’s rendition of Curtis Mayfield’s hit spiritual, People Get Ready, which the Vanilla Fudge had recorded on their latest album at that time. Their big Hammond organ cranked out one of the most soulful rock renditions of the song I will ever hear, with the lyrics blasting out what I now see as a sign of things to come for me, although I was some forty years from realizing it. I recommend viewing both of the YouTube video links suggested below: the first features the original recording of the song by Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions with some sixty-style protest footage, providing a flavor of the intensity of the late sixties, and the second video is an updated Vanilla Fudge live version. 

People Get Ready The Impressions https://youtu.be/l04yM7-BWbg

Vanilla Fudge People Get Ready https://youtu.be/kTemrdysHHo

 

People get ready, there’s a train comin’.

You don’t need no baggage, you just get on board.

All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin’.             

You don’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord.                   

People get ready, there’s a train to Jordan                  

Picking up passengers coast to coast.                   

Faith is the key, open the doors and board them.                   

There’s hope for all among those loved the most.

The late sixties evolved into the early seventies. I transferred to Temple University, and I got serious about pursuing my undergraduate degree in Behavioral Psychology, with a strong focus on religious studies, especially Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism, with a particular interest in the Muslim esoteric mystical Sufism and the Christian Mystics, such as Thomas Merton. I was especially attracted to Native American and Mexican spiritual thought, such as Black Elk Speaks, The Ghost Shirt Society, and, of course, Carlos Castaneda’s books on the spiritual teachings of Don Juan.  

My favorite religion professor at Temple University had long hair, lived alone in the mountains, and would come down for class and explain the spiritual landscape of the time. Alan Watts was my author of choice, with The Way of Zen, What is Tao, and his classic Psychotherapy East and West being my favorites. I read every book I could get my hands on, expanding my concept of God at that time, believing God was in all things, but God was surely not a human figure in the sky. I saw no need for my involvement with established religions.

EARLY LOVE AND CONVERSION, GRADUATE BUSINESS

SCHOOL, AND MY EARLY ADULT YEARS

For some divine reason, two of my major love interests during my college years, and my early twenties were lovely, intelligent, and creative Jewish women, who I loved dearly, if not altogether successfully. Of course, I was captivated by their self-confidence and sense of strength. Still, I also found myself fascinated with their families, the Jewish culture and community, their ethnic heritage, religious involvement, and their concept of God.

I earnestly set out to fully understand Judaism, deciding to convert before my marriage to my first wife and our traditional Jewish wedding. I was twenty-three, my future father-in-law thought it was unnecessary, and my family, who had little control over me, or input, just sighed. My mother was confused, but as usual, always supportive. For six months, I attended conversion classes, met with Rabbis, and on several occasions expressed my feelings that I was not fully sure God existed but was told that Judaism was open to all, and that doubt was natural and acceptable. I took my ritual Mikveh dunk in the pool (similar to baptism), had my ritual circumcision, and at the age of twenty-three found myself in front of a large conservative Jewish congregation, reading the Torah and chanting Hebrew prayers, as my mother and my future wife’s family watched in wonder.

When you convert to Judaism, you are required to select a Hebrew name. I had reviewed the long list of possible names but decided to make up my own name. I selected Johanatan Asher (pronounced Yo-han-a-tan  As–sher), or Jonathan Asher in English, primarily because I thought it sounded affluent and would suit me well if I pursued a career in the arts or music. I did not have a clue of what it meant in Hebrew. When I told the Rabbi my spiritual name – he held his breath for a moment– stared at me and asked – “G., do you know what this name means?” I said no, but I thought it sounded good. He paused – looking into my eyes – and said, “in Hebrew, it means - a gift of love from God.” He laughed and said – “great name!”

Although I had an excellent spiritual name, Johanatan Asher, worshiped as a Jew, lived as a Jew, I always felt like a convert who was seriously missing the ethnic part of being a Jew, and after my divorce, I slipped away and went on searching. For what I missed, at the time, was Jesus – and since I was raised on Jesus and loved all that Jesus had become spiritually, I could not just forget Jesus as a key spiritual presence in my life. But the name Johanatan Asher is still close to my heart, and I still consider it my spiritual name, reflecting my revived commitment to God, along with a deep, and enduring connection with Judaism. 

I must add a brief postscript to this section that has been revealed during the final preparation of this book. This past holiday gift-giving season Ann gives me a 23andme Health and Ancestry DNA screening kit. Besides an ancestry review, it determines your risk for various health issues. I put it aside and did not send in my sample for three months. Finally, I completed two hours of extensive health questions. I kept telling Ann, “I am Dutch and German, forgetting that I knew nothing about my Mother’s ancestry.” When I received the results, I failed to review the data for another month. I was not very engaged in the process. Then, one Sunday night I was tired of editing, and I decided to give it a look. I was stunned when I learned the following: I am 36.1% British – Irish from the United Kingdom; 28.5% French and German – Netherlands based; only 4.9% Scandinavian – Danish; and .3% Ashkenazi Jewish – resulting from a  (fourth, fifth, or sixth) great-grandparent on my father’s side who was 100% Ashkenazi Jewish born between 1680 and 1770. I am in search of the details of this welcomed grandparent and genetic addition.

MY FIRST CAREER DECISION - MUSIC OR BUSINESS?

I was also twenty–three years old and trying to decide what I would do for my life’s work. I was an Assistant Manager at a large Woolworth store in a suburban Philadelphia mall and was recently married. My passion at the time was learning to play Jazz guitar and writing songs. I loved the old standards and was studying with my teacher Nick, who knew over a thousand songs, able to play and sing all one thousand at the drop of a keyword. So I applied and was accepted to Berklee School of Music in Boston.

But reality set in, when I was accepted as a student with a local group of Bebop musicians/teachers, who taught the Bebop style of playing to many jazz artists including John Coltrane, and Roland Kirk. The best known modern Bebop jazz guitarist trained by this cohort of legendary musicians was Philadelphia’s own Pat Martino - a Bebop jazz guitar great of the ‘60s and ‘70s. It was Pat Martino, who, after suffering a brain aneurysm and corrective brain surgery in the 1970s, was left with a blank slate for a mind, losing almost complete memory of his family and his ability to play guitar, having to listen to his own albums and relearn the instrument. Here is a recent YouTube video of Pat Martino below, revealing the absolute speed and talent required to master Bebop jazz.  

Pat Martino Trio – Full House Published 2014 

https://youtu.be/IzW8jzICbm8

Along with being an excellent jazz guitarist, my teacher was a devout Jehovah’s Witness who quietly ended each lesson with religious handouts and divine guidance. He also expected his students to practice the guitar at least six hours a day. I quickly realized that I did not have the chops or the time needed for this type of musical focus.

Knowing this and that I had no source of funding and would need to eat in the future, I also applied to the MBA program at Temple University and was accepted. Since I was accepted to both Berklee and Temple at the same time, I needed to make a decision. After a few hours of debate and discussion with my new wife, I/we chose to keep music my hobby and get my MBA.  It was an interesting choice since I had never taken a business course in my life. You may also want to ask why not Psychology, Journalism, or Religion, and I would have only one answer; “I had a wife and needed to get organized and get what was thought of as a “real job."

GRADUATE BUSINESS SCHOOL AND MY MID-TWENTIES

In September of 1976, I was working twenty-plus hours per week as a Graduate Assistant for the Temple University Career Development Center, while pursuing my MBA degree at the Graduate School of Business. I was offered this highly sought after Graduate Assistantship, which paid a monthly stipend and full tuition costs, including books, for working twenty hours a week at the Career Services Center, charged with preparing my fellow MBA students for their job search and eventual placement. 

I was one of the many candidates for this position, and when I later asked why I had been offered the position, I was told by my then boss that it was because I wore an impressive three-piece blue suit to the interview. It was my good luck that only a month before I had a part-time job at an upper-end men’s store, and although I left after only a few weeks, I had been fitted for and bought a beautifully tailored three-piece blue suit. My life would have been very different had I showed up like the other candidates, not dressed in a suit. The universe was definitely looking out for me.

While at the career center, I had access to professional counselors and a library of resource materials. After reading in the Occupational Outlook Handbook published by the US Government that the Personnel field, as it was called then, would evolve into an essential function for all organizations, and would be a high demand job; so I selected Industrial Relations/Organizational Behavior as my MBA major or concentration.

During the summers in graduate school, I would work in paid HR internships, or occasionally, be able to land a short-term consulting assignment with a local Philadelphia company. For example, at the local Osteopathic Hospital, I spent one summer interviewing incumbents and writing a job description for every job in the hospital. My favorite experience was interviewing the Mortician, who delighted in taking me from cadaver to cadaver, having me touch each so I could understand the elasticity of corpses, and then took great delight in showing me the corresponding brain that had already been removed and put in a jar.

Or my summer long, semi-consulting job, at Max The Fender Man’s, the largest indoor car parts yard on the east coast. My assignment was to work with Max’s grandson, who had an interesting idea to create a chain of Jiffy Lube type, high speed, bumper replacement centers throughout the US. We found a location, and I hired an artist friend of mine to create the logo for the business, which would be called “Bumper Boy.”

Yes, Max The Fender Man and Bumper Boy, the dynamic duo of auto parts and repairs. Our logo was created - a superman type superhero easily wielding two giant bumpers, which turned into lightning bolts crisscrossing Bumper Boy’s chest. The new venture was a noble effort, and who knows might have worked had it not taken so long to change a bumper in real life and had not required a rather sizeable on-site warehouse to store the bumpers.

CAREER DEVELOPMENT - MY FIRST MANAGEMENT JOB

When I received my MBA with a concentration in Industrial Relations/Organizational Behavior, or Human Resources Management as it is presently known, I decided to stay on at the Career Center and work in career development, which blended my counseling and business education skills. I took a position running the Temple Cooperative Education Program and enjoyed working on campus. It also allowed me to continue to take graduate-level-courses in counseling, career development, and education.    

After only a year, I was offered the position of Director of Career Services at the center and found myself managing a staff of twelve, including six professional career counselors, many of whom had competed for this position. This was a major opportunity for me, and it changed my life significantly. As the Director of Career Services, I conducted, on average; ten career development based job search presentations and workshops each week: taught two career development college courses for Temple: and became a recognized local expert on career change, second careers, and job search techniques. 

As I mentioned previously, my new office overlooked the large bust sized statue of Russell Conwell in the Founders Garden, which was the final resting place of this New Thought genius. My parents were amazed by my rapid ascension at the center, and thought that since I was a Director, working at a major university, that I had “made it.” So I would not become complacent, I would remind myself that this was only the start of my career. 

Time flew by, and I was 30 years old, divorced now from my first wife, enjoying my job, taking graduate-level courses in career development, and augmenting my income by teaching two business courses for the local community college. One day in Mitten Hall, where I worked, I met a Thai international student who would become my second wife. Shortly after that, with my new wife’s expertise as a cook and pastry chef, I opened my first business, an eclectic restaurant called the Wharton Street Kitchen in the heart of South Philadelphia, while still working at Temple and keeping all of my other teaching jobs.

Spiritually, I would spend much of my thirties immersed in Asian culture, and although my wife was a Buddhist, I did not convert or join the religion. During this period, I did not attend a Jewish or Christian church, but spent a great deal of time in Buddhist Temples, working to understand eastern religion and culture. From this marriage, in my mid-thirties, I welcomed my two sons and fatherhood into my life. 

THE WHARTON STREET KITCHEN

I would be leaving out a defining section of my life, if I closed out the discussion of my young adult years, without reflecting on my two plus years in South Philadelphia and the Wharton Street Kitchen. Some of my favorite characters and memories came from this, my first entrepreneurial experience. Let me start by saying that I have always been fascinated with entrepreneurs and their ability to create a business from only an idea, street smarts, and hard work.

Having lived in the Jewish community, I had a chance to meet many amazing entrepreneurs, including my first wife’s father, who went from a cab driver, to record distributor, to owning his own art publishing company. I admired him, and the others I met and secretly longed to do the same. One of my favorite movies at the time was The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz - a comedy-drama film based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Mordecai Richler, starring a young Richard Dreyfuss who plays Duddy, the son of a Jewish Montreal cab driver. Duddy yearns for more and decides to become an entrepreneur, and through a series of small to big business deals, ends up poised to own a resort in the Catskill Mountains. I loved the movie and wanted to emulate Duddy’s remarkable climb.

Here I am, an aspiring Duddy, with a new girlfriend who is Thai and comes from a family of entrepreneurs, and we here about a little storefront luncheonette in South Philadelphia on Wharton Street, with all the equipment needed to open up a restaurant without much work or expense. We visit the small corner restaurant, which is the first floor of a large corner South Philadelphia row home, with large glass windows and an old-fashioned soda counter, complete with everything you need to set up a business.

Mario, the landlord, lived directly across the street with his mother, who he recently brought from Italy to live with him. Mario assured us in a still thick Italian accent that the right people could make this restaurant work, and to make the deal, he would throw in the third-floor apartment.  Two nights later, after convincing my younger brother  who was managing a parking lot, to quit his job and become a partner. I faced Mario in his home with his furniture snugly protected in plastic. I casually asked Mario what he did for a living; he quickly handed me his card, and said, surveying his living room, “as you can see, I’m an Interior Decorator.” 

OK, interior decorator, and two days later with the use of my American Express card and 5,000 dollars we borrowed from my girlfriend’s sister, the three of us moved into the third-floor apartment and began renovations. A new sign; new tile floors; painting the walls yellow; drywalling the back room so we could fit more tables; a new stove, and we were opened for business. Our strategy - the Wharton Street Kitchen would be an eclectic luncheonette serving everything from the traditional hoagies and cheesesteaks to fried wontons, Quiche Lorraine, seafood omelets, and our specialty, and calling card would be upscale cakes, pies, and pastry, which we would sell both retail and wholesale. We advertised, put menus and featured items up on the glass windows, and were ready to open the doors. 

Finally, it was opening day, and our first customer to walk across the threshold took two steps, grabbed his chest, fell on the floor, and had a heart attack. At first, we thought it was some joke that Mario, who was a prankster, had set up. No such luck. Thankfully, our first customer was rushed to the hospital and did not die. In a small Italian neighborhood, news travels fast, and for the next two weeks, everyone who walked into the restaurant had to grab his or her chest and reenact the scene.

The business sustained itself, and we became well known for pastry, pies, and cakes, but after two years we all grew tired with the work, the seven day weeks, especially me, who was working two other jobs, and we moved on. My wife, after our divorce, eventually becomes a well-regarded pastry chef and a successful entrepreneur. My brother went on to manage a car rental business, later marrying and relocating to Dover, Delaware, and I went on to corporate America and the world of high tech. At the Wharton Street Kitchen, I learned more about life than about business, but to this day, I cherish the memories of every soul that provided me with this unique life experience.

HIGH TECH, ISLAND BREAK, AND MID-LIFE

During this time, right around my 30th birthday, my professional Human Resources career took off, and I was offered a Human Resources position with the second-largest computer mainframe company at the time, Burroughs Corporation, located in Detroit, Michigan.  I was hired to cover college relations and recruiting from twelve of the top East Coast universities. My job was to meet with the faculty and student groups, so I could identify and recruit the most talented computer engineers on campus.

My first office was located in a building in Paoli, Pennsylvania, where the ENIAC - short for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer- the first general-purpose electronic computer, was created in the 1940s. I loved the high tech computer industry, and the talented people who created the large mainframe computers that were designed and assembled in Paoli, PA and then shipped around the world. I would walk through the manufacturing center, watching as these mammoth machines, by today’s standards, were created.

I also participated in the largest merger in computer industry history, when Michael Blumenthal, the former Secretary of the Treasury under the Carter Administration, and then Burroughs’ CEO, created Unisys through the merger of Sperry and Burroughs. The years rolled by, and I was promoted, and began my climb up the corporate ladder being glad to be known as a “techy.” My marriage suffered and finally ended in divorce, and I became a single father who had shared custody of my two boys. I quickly realized what most working single mothers know, it is not easy to be on the fast track and take care of your children alone. Eventually, I met a woman who was single and had three children, and we planned to move in together to manage our families and our careers, but she lived in Maryland, and I lived in Pennsylvania.

At this point, I was an expert in compensation and benefits with Unisys and looked for a job that would let me move closer to my new life. I wrote a letter to the President of the local Citibank customer service center and was hired, beginning my five-year career with the number one bank in the world. Again, I had landed solidly on my feet and started to learn the credit card business, and after a year, became the Director of Human Resources for Citibank Telemarketing, and we all moved to Baltimore, Maryland. Citibank had a frantic New York pace, which they brought to everything they did. I enjoyed the pace, and the prestige of working for Citibank, and again made my way up the ladder of success.

ISLAND BREAK

And then, I was approaching my early forties, with close to ten years at Unisys and Citibank under my belt, and I was home every night playing guitar and writing songs. I concluded that I had gone the wrong way, when I made my decision to go to business school, rather than a music school. I wanted to write songs and play music and felt trapped in a life where this was not possible. So, I decided to take a year off and focus on my music.

My wife was interested in starting a restaurant or running an Inn. There was an opportunity to run an Inn on an Island off the coast of New England with the option to buy. I would have time to write and try to publish music, as we ran the Inn with a restaurant together. Sounded great except that we would have to sell our house and move our children to the Island. On the positive side, we had vacationed on the Island, and my stepdaughter currently worked at the Inn. The family all agreed, and we went to live on a beautiful Island with Ireland like cliffs, with over a third of its land protected by the Nature Conservancy.

We went in January, rented a large house on the beach, and began our new life. In the winter there were only 800 residents on the island, close to 5,000 tourists a day inhabited the island in the summer. I wrote and practiced my music to get ready to record, as we started working and managing a historic Inn. Our friends all thought we were crazy, but we thought that we were adventurous.

We loved the island and its beauty, but the solitary nature of winter on the island was a lesson in overcoming sensory deprivation, especially if you had been working in Washington, DC. But the sheer beauty that surrounded us each day was thrilling. We worked through the summer at the Inn, while I recorded and tried to sell my music. Again, it was a learning experience. Finally, realizing that both innkeeping and songwriting were not our strong suits, we decided to return to Virginia. I have always been proud that I took the time to explore my musical side,  feeling that in the end, I had made the right choice to make music a hobby rather than a vocation.

RETURN TO THE HIGH-TECH LIFE

While still living on the Island, my former boss from Unisys called to check on me and asked if I was interested in getting back into the high-tech world. I jumped at the chance. He had taken a senior-level manager's job with an international wireless consulting firm, owned by a husband and wife team from India. The husband, a Radio Frequency Engineering professor, foreseeing the cellular phone craze, speculated that the only way the needed wireless sites would be feasibly set up would be if there were enough Radio Frequency Engineers, or RF Engineers as they were then called, to set up the infrastructure in each city around the world. He concluded, that if he started a consulting firm and hired these engineers first, then the major communication companies, who wanted to set up coverage, would be dependent on his talent to succeed.

He did just that, hiring the majority of RF Engineers not already tied down. As a result, any communication company who wanted to set up cellular service in a particular city needed to use his consultants. Covering human resources, my boss and I were responsible for recruiting RF Engineers worldwide, getting them H1 visas, bringing them to the U.S. for a few weeks, and then redeploying them to assignments around the world. We also needed to manage the employee relations of having employees from 72 different countries working together, teaming up, even if they may be motal enemies at home and at home. Now, wireless communications was the new high-tech industry, and again I was working at the cutting edge.

All was not perfect in my life, as I began to deal with a sense of doom and depression, finding it hard to sleep at night. Memories of my childhood appeared in my dreams, and my thoughts, and I felt I needed help. By the time I was forty-five, I was already seeing a therapist again, trying to resolve the nightmare that was my childhood, and taking an assortment of medication. I had also stopped running every day, and along with the effects of the drugs, I was gaining weight quickly and having trouble sleeping. Then came the sleeping pills, followed by the sleep apnea machine, so that I could sleep each night. I started to feel lost, and every time I came up with a new problem, was issued a new drug. 

WHAT ABOUT THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY?

So, where am I spiritually during this time? I was not focused on my spiritual needs and did not feel an urge to attend church. But my wife and me, at the time, agreed when we came back to Virginia, from the island, that we needed a church primarily for the children. I felt my sons needed to see all options given their exposure to Buddhism from visits with their mother. 

The Episcopal Church, which was active in the community, looked good. I briefly attended an Episcopal church, when I was in college and found the Episcopalians to be liberal and socially tolerant. Since I had Amerasian children, I was very concerned about racial and ethnic tolerance and acceptance. For most of my forties, as I raised my boys, I was an Episcopalian, and honestly, quite active in the church. I was an usher, a bible reader, and organized the adult education program.

I liked the Episcopal Church because it allowed desent, had wonderful rituals like offering communion at every service, and was controlled by the congregation. But no matter how hard I tried, I felt like I was missing the point; as if there was some secret or ritual that I had overlooked. As with many Christian denominations, my Episcopal training did not offer any real guidance on developing an interactive relationship with God.

FLASHING SATELLITES IN THE NIGHT SKY

After about five years at the wireless consulting firm, I was facing my late forties and looking for my next career move. The boss, who recruited me into the firm, had left. Then gladly, a start-up telecommunications company, backed by Motorola and partnering with 35 other telecommunication companies around the globe recruited me. This consortium of companies had a vision of creating hand-held satellite phones the size of a cell phone connected by 66 low orbiting satellites. These satellites would fly around the earth, bouncing calls from satellite to satellite. When over, the country that was being called would send the call to a gateway on the planet, then channel the call through the standard communications system.

As long as there was the open sky, satellite phone users would be able to connect no matter where they were: on a mountain; in a jungle clearing; out at sea; or in the middle of a disaster zone. No towers are needed, except in cities with very tall buildings. I knew this was possible because COMSAT had done this with bigger stationary satellites, but their telephone was the size of a large suitcase. At that time, Iridium’s phone was the size of a small World War II walkie-talkie, but Motorola would trim it down significantly before the business's launch in the next four years.

It was my dream job, and given my wireless experience, I was their dream candidate. I took over their international HR operations, Compensation, and Benefits and helped grow this company, from under 100 employees, to over 500 at the time of business launch. Every day, I would walk into the office on I Street in Washington DC, and look up at a mock-up prototype of the Low Orbiting Satellite hanging from the ceiling in the lobby. These satellites were being constructed for liftoff from launch sites around the world, and I knew I was in high-tech heaven. This organization, of what I called - “true believers,” actually created an unimaginable network of low orbiting satellites that could handle calls from a phone on the ground, and pass it from satellite to satellite to the country of choice.

Here are a few of my Iridium Satellite memories that I would like to share.

• I remember one Sunday, when I took my boys to the Press Club in Washington, DC, to see a number of our satellites being rocketed into space from a space center in Russia. 
• Iridium satellites would have a flare, or glint, which could be seen from earth, moving across the night sky, which got more and more press as the entire set was orbited, and became the talk of my neighborhood.
• One night, I took the prototype phone home to test, and stood on my front lawn in McLean, Virginia, and called my neighbor next door, knowing that this call went directly up to a low orbiting satellite, was bounced from satellite to satellite until it was over the Iridium Gateway, in Arizona, where it was received from a satellite to the gateway, then moved through landlines to be picked up by my neighbors in their home, just minutes later. Wow, it was amazing, at least to me.

Iridium went public with only five of the satellites in orbit and no working phone. Since I was in charge of stock options for employees, I watched as the stock prices went from twenty dollars a share to seventy-four dollars in a few months of trading. I remember thinking, that many of us were millionaires in a stock option value, even before the service was up and running.

The launch of the Iridium service took place in 1998, after five billion dollars of investor money had been spent creating the system. Amazingly, the system worked perfectly, but the phone was thought too big by many, the cost too high.  In the end, most consumers stayed with their traditional cell phones that had improved enormously during the ten years it took to build the system. Consumer demand did not meet expectations, and although the stock market was leery, we were hopeful.

In December of 1998, Iridium celebrated its holiday party in the Smithsonian Air And Space Museum in DC, with satellite connections to over thirty countries around the world being shown on large screens throughout the museum. Food from all the participating countries was available,  beautifully prepared, and catered. It was an affair to be talked about and remembered by all in the satellite industry, and a peak experience of my lifetime. I was a working-class kid from Philadelphia at the center of a high tech adventure. This was a high point in my life.

The lowest point came the next August when after six months of struggle, Motorola and all the investors realized this was not a commercially feasible product and declared bankruptcy. The company was finally sold to a private investor for twenty-five million dollars, with the shareholders of worthless stock, and employees with worthless stock options, including me – stunned. This was the lowest point in my life, and I joke that I had the highest and lowest point all in one year. The company was sold, and I was one of the last to leave, as I placed many of the “true believers” in their new jobs.

NEXT STOP HEALTHCARE?

I am proud to say that the Iridium Satellite phone system is fully functioning, as Iridium phones are sold and used throughout the world by governments, news media, maritime, aviation, and disaster relief organizations. Not a consumer success, but certainly a technological success. But the satellite communications industry was not going to be revived for a long time, as one giant company after another, tried to deal with what was a major downturn.  

For me, I sat at home for a few weeks, then got a call from a new start-up company that planned to offer radio via satellites and needed an HR consultant who was familiar with the satellite industry. So I began consulting with XM Satellite Radio, as they hired their talent and prepared to go public. Although the money was great, and I had the highest-earning year of my life, as I worked for XM and several other companies, I did not feel I could make a go of it as an independent consultant.

Bob Dylan so aptly stated, it does not take a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows. When the consulting ran out, I knew I needed to find a new industry. My research was indicating that healthcare was on track to be one of the fastest-growing industries. I turned my sights on healthcare. But for me, this meant starting over and giving up a lifestyle that could only be supported by six-figure salaries and large bonuses. It would also entail moving to a hospital that would be willing to consider my background.

My next stop became Bangor, Maine, and an HR Director’s position for a large hospital system, seeking my high-tech background to assist with their increased competition for health care staff. I sold my house in McLean, Virginia, uprooted my high school-age kids, and I realized that my career luck might have seriously changed for the worse.  In late October, we arrived in Maine in a snowstorm, with the temperature fixed at twenty-five degrees below zero, staying that way for two weeks. After that, I did not see the ground again, without snow, until late April of the following year.

Maine, a beautiful state, had a very brief summer and a very long dark winter. Maine also had some extra seasons, such as “mud season” in late April and early May, where there is nothing but mud as far as the eye can see, followed by “black fly season,” where tiny flies tear into your skin. A Maine joke claims that if you can’t take the winters, mud season, and black fly season, you shouldn’t be allowed to enjoy the two weeks of summer.  

Again, I adapted, and even though working for a not-for-profit hospital was a shock with my tiny office - low budget – an even lower salary, I found myself working with some of the most dedicated people I had met in my life.  Healthcare had the complexity of high-tech and the same competitive pressures to recruit talented staff, but there was a sense of compassion and decency at the core. Healthcare in Maine, and all over the country, was growing rapidly and gradually becoming the number one industry. After a few months, I realized that it was not about me this time, but the patient, and I felt good about being part of the team.

In Maine, I also got involved politically for the first time and was elected to the Town Council for my little town. I joined the local Episcopal Church and stayed an active member until the issue of the ordination of a gay priest as Bishop surfaced. My church sent out a letter condemning the move, and gays in general, and I became very angry, again deciding that established religion was no longer for me. After a few years, I also decided it was time to leave Maine. I worked with a nutritionist to lose over 80 pounds from my top weight of 275 pounds. Over a number of months the weight rolled off, and I began job searching. Finally one March day a headhunter called and asked me if I wanted to work in Fredericksburg, Virginia at a major regional hospital. I said yes, my wife, said no and decided to stay in Maine, and the rest is history as outlined in Chapter One.

BUOYANCY REVISITED

First, I must thank you for staying with me and working through my life story. For many, I feel that it will help you to understand how I ended up here writing this book and the blog. For others, it just might be an interesting story of someone who was looking for something during a fascinating time in our history, and even when going to the bottom of the barrel at times, seemed to float back on top.

I often ask myself the question about whether there is a divine plan that we seem to follow or if our own free will directs us. I believe it is a little of both. I do know that each step led to the next step, which uniquely prepared me for this step. But all of life requires that we overcome our fears and have the confidence to take the next step. I would like to end this chapter with a Closing Note On Enlightenment that sums up this notion, along with an affirmation for building confidence.

CLOSING NOTE ON ENLIGHTENMENT

To end this chapter focused on my spiritual and life journey, I would like to feature a related Meditation Guidance, titled The Magic Of Intent, from my train commute on February 2, 2008.  As I read and proof this chapter, I can see the divine magic that has been alive in my life. The coincidences and chance happenings are starting to make sense and fall into place, and - no matter what the intent - it all appears magical to me.

 

THE MAGIC OF INTENT - MEDITATION GUIDANCE

Life is magical, amazing, beyond what is hoped for or

conceived. Feel and see the magic, the uniqueness of

each person, event, thought, item. Experience the magic

in each moment – how it connects and reflects your mood –

your thoughts – your emotions.

    The magic exists and comes from the orchestrated

creative force of our collective intelligence divinely

guided by Spirit. See how it all fits in – a wondrous

coincidence that is without coincidence. Nothing

happens – it all flows from the magic of thought,

desires, and wants to manifest in the world. 

    Feel the warmth and light of the sun through

the window and wonder at the wisdom that

manifested this Spirit –this ball of life-giving energy.

This is the magic – the magic is everywhere – 

for like a magic trick – behind the magic is divine

will directed by collective good intentions.

    Wonder at the magic. The magic is rooted in your

ability to manifest your reality – to create it brick

by brick and have this reality unfold and interact

with the reality of others – and finally, be divinely

intertwined into the manifested reality of all life.

    As you attract and bring the world to you,

receiving as you believe, so too does the will

of others. Together this magic comes to create 

all life – a harmony of cocreated existence.

    Look deep within the magic, behind the curtain,

in the hat, and you will see purposeful reality –

no coincidence – all related – all positive,

creative force intent on evolving.

NOE BY G. 2.2.2008 7:45 AM                             

 

CLOSING AFFIRMATION

Affirmations are positive statements announcing to God – Universal Mind – and to our subconscious mind how we view the world and what we expect to occur during the day, or in our life. It is a powerful way to use the Law of Attraction to frame our reality and set positive expectations.

Moving forward with the creation of our lives takes confidence. We need to have the confidence that we will land on the other side when we take the risk – the leap of faith - we will land on the other side. I close with an affirmation that I use every day, especially when my ego starts to work on generating my doubts and fears. This Affirmation is titled Confidence and will help us as we venture on with our spiritual quests, to stay on track with the cocreation of our genuine - authentic lives.

                                         CONFIDENCE

I am extremely self-confident and self-accepting, knowing

I have the skills, abilities, talents, personality, and courage

to succeed easily at any task I attempt. I am confident;

I am the best at what I do and will attain great success in

whatever I endeavor to accomplish. I am proud of my past,

my accomplishments, and my experiences, understanding

how they have led me to this level of exceptional

achievement. I am the best getting better. I am proud.

I am self-assured. I am a winner.

NEXT STOP

The next step in understanding my spiritual and life journey is to take some time to fully understand the evolution of New Thought, and how it has impacted me directly, and all of us today. This is important, since the message I will convey in Part Two, is centered on the basic tenets of New Thought, especially the critical concept that each of us can have a significant, ongoing, personal connection with God. See you on the train. 

THE CEMENT ARCHES BENEATH THE ELEVATED FREDERICKSBURG, VA TRAIN STATION TRACKS, PRESENTING A FRACTAL LIKE PATTERN OF INFINITE BEAUTY ALL ITS OWN. 

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