During this time, I was exposed to quite a bit of sexual innuendos and comments. It wasn't something I particularly enjoyed hearing about, although I am sometimes curious and interested in learning about things I don't know much about. Some of the late night editing sessions would turn into somewhat of a taxicab confession scenario, especially when we hopped out first for dinner and margaritas at El Torito across the street. During one of the late night "editing room confessions," one high-level executive shared with me about his dates with a Chilean dominatrix who would apparently put the heel of her shoe in his face. I just kept editing and tried not to look too surprised.
This arena of new information and too much information was getting into overload for me, but there it was nevertheless -- all part of my new life in Los Angeles. I was learning bits and pieces about human sexuality from some strange angles. During this time, I was also thinking that it might be good to have some kind of romantic relationship with a man, in part because as a heterosexual woman, I didn't want the only relationship I'd had to be the harmful one I'd had with Suze Orman.
The internet had recently opened up to regular folks through America Online, which offered chat rooms on many different topics, including quite a few sex-based rooms. I was working two full time jobs at the time, and although I did have some friends, didn't usually have too much time to socialize, since I'd work most days from morning until evening. This wasn't too much of a problem, since I tended to find parties and the like to be somewhat boring, uncomfortable, and a waste of time. But in the evening after work, I'd sign on to this new internet thing to check the news and get email. I'd sometimes visit some of the chat rooms, thought not generally the sex-based ones, other than a few quick visits out of curiousity and for education. I wasn't thinking about using the internet to find a boyfriend -- I was looking more for some general social conversation before going to sleep.
At one point, I came up with an anonymous new screen name that was an abbreviation of one of our cartoon character's names. Unbeknownst to me, it turned out that the name I chose could also be used to refer to a certain set of sexual practices that involve domination and submission. I wasn't familiar with such practices, other than a few mentions during those late night editing room confessions from the high-level executive, but suddenly received screenfulls of private messages from fellows who thought I must be into kinky sex or want to give or receive a spanking. Holy crap!
I have to admit to being intrigued about the messages, and as usual in my approach to life, assumed that if all these messages were appearing on my screen in such a dramatic way, complete with ringtones as each one appeared, maybe there would be something for me to learn in them. I visited the chat room some of the messages recommended. It was some kind of roleplaying 18th century castle type cyber-place with various kinds of masters and slaves all interacting with conversations and colorful scenarios that were created solely through dialogue and creative descriptions. It was quite entertaining and humorous to watch, with some very clever scenarios weaving through one another. It was funny to be in such a place and so I watched quietly for a while. Everyone's screen names were displayed next to the chat screen, and suddenly, one of the masters ordered me to get him some kind of cyber drink. I was intrigued to feel a certain flush of being called upon, because it was familiar -- kind of a mixture of self-consciousness, fear, and excitement. It was similar to the flush I'd felt as a child when a teacher called on me; with even a flavor of the kind of flush I'd feel when my guru would speak to or about me.
While watching the continuing scenarios taking place in Le Chateau, I was guided to contemplate the experiences of power and submission that are woven throughout life, and certainly through spiritual life, where one works to discipline themselves, efface their ego personality and be of greater service to God. With a guru/disciple relationship comes the added dimensions of submission and obedience, hopefully within a sense of responsibility and a view of spiritual oneness.
Seeing these online roleplaying scenarios guided me to consider and contemplate various aspects of my life through new contexts. I was still processing nearly two years of being in a relationship with a fairly dominating Suze Orman, who had sometimes been abusive toward me and had taken sexual liberties while I was asleep -- in spite of her knowing that I was not gay, was a virgin fresh out of monastic life who hadn't even shared a romantic kiss with anyone in well over a decade, and would not have approved her actions. Just the fact that she had pushed me into having a relationship that went against my nature after I'd said "Thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere" (paraphrased) showed that I had to look more closely at my own weakness and lack asserting myself. Probably some counseling about all this would have been helpful at the time, but I felt that it would be possible for me to contemplate and explore on my own why I had allowed myself to be victimized so I could protect myself from people like Suze in the future.
I considered that it was one thing to choose to give my submission to a guru with the understanding that we were both rays of the same divine light wanting to uplift itself through the format of a guru-disciple relationship. The ashram was a unique combination of life situations and flavors. One element was the natural submission that a disciple shows (and generally experiences) toward their guru.
Some people have bosses that they have to obey practically without question. This offering of one's obedience to the guru was kind of like that, except very different in the motivation and feeling, really a whole different ball game. A good guru is like a master musician who plays your soul -- all the different strings, including love, surrender, fear, desire, longing for liberation, challenge, praise, blame, study, self-effort, self-doubt, self-respect, anger, sense of justice, charity, divinity, attachment, transcendence of attachment, gratitude, loyalty, and faith. A good guru plays within your being sounds that you may have never known were inside yourself.
I didn't consider myself to be a submissive type person, and unlike some devotees was comfortable in making most of my own decisions without asking for outer guidance. But in the midst of the guru-disciple relationship, I naturally and lovingly softened my own self will and approached the guru with trust, openness, and love. I pulled down the barriers and dissolved the hard shells that covered my heart with each broken-hearted moment of life.
This deep trust and love was ultimately for something greater than the outer form of the guru. It was an esoteric dynamic. You were learning to trust and obey the universe and her laws, and the guru-disciple relationship was teaching you how to do that.
One smile from the guru could lift your spirit into untold heights of happiness -- for a long time. Seeing the guru walking towards you down a hallway would bring, along with the happiness, a sense of attentiveness and excitement, perhaps tinged with a touch of fear. You knew that with a swish of her whim, she could change any and every detail of your external life, especially if you were on staff in the ashram. She could move you from editing videos to shoveling cow manure with just a word, give you special gifts of serving closely with lavish perks, or push you right out the doors on your ass. And throughout these pleasant and unpleasant gifts was woven a trust that whatever moved through her (or him in the case of my first guru) was a gift that would lead to greater spiritual unfoldment.
I communicated privately with some folks in this 18th century castle cyber-room of people playing various domination and submission power play scenarios -- some only cyber, and some in real life as well. I was surprised to find that most were respectable community members -- doctors, lawyers, scientists, husbands, fathers, and wives. Most of these folks were using these cyber-scenarios to fill certain sexual and non-sexual needs that were not being met by a somewhat homogenized society. Having been exposed to theories about reincarnation, I would imagined that some of their impulses could possibly come from the many lifetimes we probably all have had where were were in dramatic situations of having to either lead or obey others -- from kings to relatives to all kinds of strange known and unknown communities and cultures. For example, one past-life therapist I've spoken to has surmised that some who suffer from anorexia today's culture may, in previous lifetimes, have been participants in Nazi concentration camps, either as victims or victimizers.
Surely, the elements of power and submission to power are firmly entrenched in our DNA, from the submission of childhood to the power of parenting, from employee to boss, priest to parishioner, husband to wife, government to citizen, from lifetimes upon lifetimes (according to reincarnation theories). Having been brought up without too much guidance or control from my family, my main experiences of power and submission in this lifetime had been in the spiritual realm of relating to God and guru, and to a lesser extent in the relationship with Suze.
Having just helped Suze with her first book, I'd become somewhat familiar with the publishing process, and thought it would be interesting to write a book that looked into the psychological and spiritual elements of power in human and divine interactions, bringing together my youthful interest in psychology with the many years of spiritual study. Even though I was still working more than fulltime on two television shows, I started putting together some pieces, ideas, and interviews for the book.
But it seemed that the universe had different ideas for my writing and other creative works, and was about to put up a big hand and say STOP! Stop this Hollywood scene, stop this book idea exploring the psychological and spiritual elements of power, and move into your next phase -- a phase of spiritual service, surrender and rich creative expressions based on the higher teachings I'd been blessed to learn in the ashram. Unfortunately, our assignment messages don't always come in clean clear packages.
During this time, my Italian actress friend Jo had discovered Pilates exercise, which was becoming a favorite of many actors and actresses. She offered me a gift of a series of classes at their studio in Hollywood. With all my work hours sitting in front of a computer, I really did need to get some exercise, and so I started going to the Pilates center twice a week for a private training session with a pilates trainer named Beth. After the series ran out, I purchased another series for several hundred dollars.
My pilates trainer Beth was pregnant, and started getting terrible morning sickness soon after I started training with her. She'd have to keep running out of the room to settle her stomach with crackers, and was unable to focuse on our training sessions. Clearly, Beth should not have been doing this job in the condition she was in, and I should have requested another trainer. But Beth was also a very sweet person, and I continued to go to her, not wanting her to feel bad. How many times do we harm ourselves out of not wanting someone else to feel bad, even when they're doing what they should not be doing? And how many lessons does it take before we learn?
One morning, I was lying on my back using one of the pilates machines with my feet up, and Beth was pushing a bar down onto my feet, stretching my knees and legs down toward my head. She asked, "Is this pressure okay?"
I replied, "Actually, it's a little too much pressure." At that point, woozy from the morning sickness, instead of easing up, Beth pushed the bar down hard, and something in my back cracked. At first it didn't hurt too much, but as I drove away from the pilates center, the endorphins began to wear off, and I started experiencing a terribly strong pain in my back and down my legs -- a sciatica pain that would last for more than a decade.
Doctors gave me all kinds of pain medication, but I really couldn't take those pills. First, I just hadn't been convinced that popping laboratory-made concoctions of chemicals into your body was generally a good idea. Also, I was working on two demanding television shows -- actually doing two and a half jobs worth of work -- and with the intense schedules and responsibilities, I couldn't be staggering around on pain medication. Yet, the pain would get so strong at night that several times during each night, I'd be awakened with what felt like someone stabbing me in the left thigh -- a level of pain that I was sure would usually come with a much more serious, perhaps life threatening injury.
It didn't take long for the lack of sleep to create other effects. Soon, I developed a severe case of Epstein Barr Virus -- chronic fatigue -- along with a whole list of other physical ailments. The next thing you knew, I was flat out, and barely able to even walk from one room to another. I took a two-week leave from work during what was originally and conveniently scheduled to be a two-week vacation trip to Egypt -- however this leave ended up going on for many years.
With my immune system shot, I started going to various doctors for the many ailments, which also came to include an 8-month-long painful infection in both of my ears. I had decent insurance coverage at the time, and the doctor I went to for that was a specialist who was also President Clinton's eyes, ears, and throat doctor -- one of the very best. His eyes would almost tear up when he saw the infection still flourishing in my ears, in spite of the aggressive antibiotic therapy. Soon the overuse of antibiotics created other symptoms that were misdiagnosed as ulcerative colitis, and, well, my whole body, top to bottom, was basically a mess.
You know how sometimes you might wonder who would be there for you if you were ever in need? Well, it was a bit of surprise to find that I was almost completely on my own, with no support community or friends at all.
One reason for this dearth of friends was a rumor that had been spreading throughout my spiritual community. I'd heard about this strange rumor from a few people over the past year, although most wouldn't have the gumption or honesty to actually ask or tell me about it. The rumor being spread throughout the worldwide spiritual community of my guru was that I had left the path, turned against the guru, become a born-again Christian, and gone off the deep end.
My inclination was to laugh at this ridiculous fantasy, and to joke that I couldn't go off the deep end because I live there, but it actually wasn't very funny at all. People believed it, and continued to spread the rumor. One bell rang another bell, and then another and another, until I no longer knew if certain devotees were being unfriendly because they'd heard the rumor or just because they were preoccupied.
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
-- Sir Winston Churchill
Soon, certain people started to add their own rumors to the seed rumor, and within a short time, I was a persona non grata in my guru's various centers. Yes, I'd be invited now and then to come to the main ashram and help with making videos, but even while I'd be visiting the ashram in plain view, people continued to say that I'd left the path, and would eye me with suspicion. Even some of the swamis or monks of the tradition who I'd considered as spiritual friends would refuse to respond to my friendly greetings. The few devotees who were respectful enough to be honest would see me visiting my guru's ashram or retreats and say things like, "Oh, I heard that you left the path."
Where had these rumors come from? I had absolutely no idea. It took about a year for me to find out that Suze and her two best friends, Tulasini and Nancy, were spreading these rumors, and boy, was I ever shocked. After a year of wondering who on earth would be spreading these false rumors about me throughout my worldwide spiritual community, I finally found out during the Saturday evening of my guru's weekend retreat in Los Angeles.
That evening, I received a phone call from a friend, Barbara, who had left the path several years earlier. She called because she'd had heard this rumor that I'd also left the path, and wanted to see how I was doing. I asked Barbara where she had heard this from, and she said it had come from Tulasini -- Suze's best friend, who was also a lawyer with a fairly high level position in our spiritual community. This is why, when the untrue rumor about me was being passed, part of the story was that it had come from a good source that could be trusted.
When Barbara told me the rumor had come from Tulasini, I was truly surprised. We had all been friends, at least until Suze and I "broke up."
The next day was Sunday, the last day of our Guru's weekend retreat in Los Angeles. We were in a large auditorium at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, with our Guru seated on the very same stage upon which I'd accepted an Emmy award several years earlier, with thanks to her for teaching me how to love my work and love my life.
But on this day, I sat above the several thousand who filled the lower levels of this auditorium. I sat at the top of the highest balcony, alone. My health was not good at the time, and on Monday, I was scheduled to have a camera go into my stomach to find out why I wasn't able to digest any food properly. It was a very intense and eclectic combination of feelings and sensations - physical illness and weakness, emotional upset and anger from finding out that Suze and Company had been the source of this very destructive rumor about me, and along with all of that, the most wonderful and sublime ecstasy of being in the presence of my beloved Gurumayi. Up there in that expansive balcony, it almost felt as though it were just she and I, in spite of the great distance between us in this auditorium that was filled with devotees.
During one of the breaks, Tulasini -- Suze's friend who had been spreading this rumor about me -- came up to the top balcony to say hello. That morning, I had told our guru's secretary that I'd discovered where the untrue rumors had been coming from, and our guru had spoken to Tulasini about the matter.
Tulasini came up to the balcony with a canister of joke candy. Our first Guru, Baba Muktananda, used to give out a particular type of chocolate almond candy called Almond Roca as a gift to visitors, and Tulasini happened to have a big canister of these candies, but with a joke label that made fun of their dark, log-like shapes -- it was something about Doggie Poop. Tulasini jokingly offered me a piece of the Doggie Poop candy, which immediately struck me as metaphorically intriguing, given all the shit I'd had to go through from her previous "gift" of pooping on me with this negative rumor. I declined her offer of the Doggie Poop.
Then I got a bit bolder than usual. There's nothing like intense illness and emotional trauma to get us past our complacent, politically correct selves. Nevertheless, I was gentle and kind in the conversation with Tulasini, feeling more sad than angry.
"Did you know that I've been extremely ill for the past 10 months?"
She replied, "No, I didn't know."
"Well, I have been, and during this time, somebody has been spreading negative rumors about me, telling people that I'd left the path, turned against the guru, become a born-again Christian, and gone off the deep end."
Tulasini looked at me with a face of total honesty and concern, and said, "I never heard that rumor about you."
My brain tweaked with that reply, and I explained, "Well that is strange because I've been specifically told by someone that you are the one spreading the rumors."
Tulasini's face shifted a bit. She's a lawyer, so maybe the ability to lie and then admit a lie comes more naturally. "Well, I'd heard that you weren't happy with the Los Angeles center devotees and that you were going to the Agape church in L.A."
The Agape church was just down the block from the meditation center in L.A., and it offered the most superb gospel-style music, along with passionate, inspiring sermons by its minister, Reverend Michael Beckwith, who has since become more widely known through his participation in the big spiritual fad of 2007 that was called “The Secret,” a presentation that really didn't do justice to the wide expanse of teachings and music he offered well beyond simple “mind over matter” manifestation techniques.
Often I'd chant the morning Guru Gita at the meditation center, have breakfast, and then walk or drive down the block to hear the wonderful music and sermons at Agape. Many other devotees did the same, but not all of them had a Suze Orman with powerful friends looking for a chink with which to destroy their reputations. I wanted to know if Tulasini was going to admit where the rumor had come from. "Did Suze ask you to spread these rumors?"
"Yes."
Wow, the truth; who would have thought it would come so easily? But, of course, this truth was also a very disappointing confirmation. I asked Tulasini, "You allowed this woman to use devotees' respect and trust of your position as a lawyer for our guru's organization to get back at an ex-lover?" At that point, I began to cry, deeply. Tulasini looked compassionate and seemed unsure of what to do or say, although she did apologize. She also mentioned being present when someone discussed with our guru a message I had posted on an America Online board where devotees and ex-devotees had been duking it out a year or so earlier. I'd shared my honest thoughts and experiences, which were basically positive toward the path while admitting some mistakes that had been made by various participants. Tulasini said that when someone had brought up my America Online posts, our guru's response was that "Kumuda wrote what she wrote out of her love for Gurumayi and the kindness of her heart."
So here, right in the midst of this person spreading malicious rumors and causing trouble for me, she had also delivered a very precious and important message of blessing from my guru, letting me know that my guru trusted my intentions regardless of what others (like Tulasini) might say. This message was a great support in subsequent years as I did come to express many books and other works, honestly and with positive intentions and a relative freedom from worry about how some might choose to interpret my honest sharings.
I suggested to Tulasini, "I think it would appropriate for you to go to each person you've told this rumor to and tell them that it isn't true. There's no way to unring a bell like this, since it has also been spread by others now, but I would like to ask you to please stop spreading the rumor, and to tell people that you were mistaken."
Tulasini agreed, but in the end, it seems to have been an empty agreement, since another woman told me that Tulasini and Suze had told her the same rumor a year later.
People on Suze and Tulasini's rumor bandwagon even phoned my friends and told them not to be friends with me, as was the case with my actress friend, Jo Champa. My conversation with Jo took place during a cast party for L.A. Law, which I'd pretty much crawled out of my sick bed to attend. Phyllis Diller was one of many celebrity guests at the party, and she and I had a very nice and fun connection, chatting, joking, and singing with the piano player. Phyllis had even given me her business card, asking me to call her so we could meet again. Although I never did phone Phyllis, I certainly did enjoy hanging out with her at the party, especially after a couple glasses of wine, which was about all it took to get me quite tipsy.
After some time, my friend Jo arrived at the party, and said that she needed to talk to me privately. We retreated into a large closet and closed the door. Jo was in a very somber mood, and told me that her friend Gabby, who was also deeply involved in our spiritual path, had recently spent three hours on the phone trying to convince Jo that she must not be friends with me anymore. Gabby had actually told Jo that our guru would be upset with her if she continued to be friends with me because I'd left the path, turned against the guru, become a born again Christian, and gone off the deep end.
Gabby was a very nervous young woman who was also an acting coach. She obviously liked hanging out with Jo because Jo was an upper echelon type of actress. However, Gabby could not understand why such a high society woman as Jo would want to hang out with low society Kumuda. Several times during our years of close friendship, Jo told me that Gabby would often ask her, "Why do you hang out with Kumuda?" Our spiritual community had a definite hierarchy of so-called "important" people, and I was not considered by Miss Gabby to be one of the in crowd.
Now, finally, Gabby had new ammunition to use in expressing her prejudice -- this rumor -- and according to Jo, she was insisting that Jo must cut off our friendship. As we sat together in L.A. Law cast member Alan Rachins' walk-in closet, Jo was visibly upset, and said, "Kumuda, I told her that we always talk about the path and the guru and that the rumor wasn't true, but she insisted that it was from a good source. Kumuda, I don't know what to do."
At that moment, I was feeling fairly detached about the whole rumor thing, and was also feeling a bit stronger after having a drink or two and having some fun with Phyllis Diller and the piano player. I replied, "Well, if you don't know what to do, then you should listen to her."
And that was pretty much the end of what had been a fairly close friendship for many years.
At the same time that these physical and personal challenges were surrounding me, many other blessings were also showering upon me. For the first time since childhood, I had time. In fact, during the previous years of working so hard in Hollywood, culminating with working two and a half full time jobs while editing and associate producing the top two kid's shows for Saban Entertainment, I had often thought, "I wish I had more time." Even during the Hollywood working years, I didn't have too much of a social life, so after long days of work, I would usually come home and spend some time alone. This precious solitude would recharge my batteries for the next tasks at hand. But now, being too ill to work, I had time all the time. Other than doctor appointments and occasional errands, I could do nothing but rest. I had some savings, and was receiving long-term disability for a while, so didn't really have to worry about taking care of my basic needs and expenses.
In this deep and long-running experience of solitude, spiritual gifts began to come to me from within. Memories reawakened, thoughts stirred, and contemplations engaged. Years earlier, my Guru had told me to stop reading Rumi and Sufi Love poetry books, explaining that I didn't really understand what they meant. I had followed this ban for about a decade, but now came the clear inner guidance that it was okay to allow Rumi and the wisdom of the Sufis back into my life. I purchased a cassette tape of Rumi's poetry and found that now I could drink these words on an entirely new level. "Turn as the earth and moon turn, circling what they love," brought a vision of the entire universe twirling and spinning, all moved by the force of love. I would light a fire in my fireplace and be treated to an in-depth vision and realization about the nature of the fire element in life. In Indian philosophy, there are said to be five elements that make up this world -- earth, fire, water, air, and ether. Through watching and feeling the strands of fire, I could see how this element was woven through my life -- in the electricity that flowed through my house, in the energy that digested my food and moved all the cells in my body, in the sun's rays that enlivened the whole world, and really as the subtle fuel behind all activity and all life. In this way, many gifts of insight were opening up within my consciousness.
As I continued to convalesce at home, it was interesting to note that nobody from the Los Angeles meditation center ever phoned to see if I was okay or if I could use some help. One friend from the center later told me that he'd heard that I left the path, and had assumed that this was why I was no longer attending any programs at the meditation center. Here I was at age 35, having dedicated many years to this spiritual community, and the whole community was gone, just like that. It was the "blessings" of Suze Orman, and ultimately, the blessings of my own destiny and of God's Grace as well.
In fact, I continued to believe, even through the sadness of these events, that everything is indeed a blessing, and that God always gives us exactly what we need from the highest perspective. Even if we can't see from that perspective, at least we can have faith that whatever comes to us is a gift from our destiny, from God's bountiful and intelligent creation. If someone chooses to leave our life -- even if that someone is an entire community -- then we have to at least consider that there may be some blessing behind their absence in our lives.
For example, just because people are part of a spiritual community, this does not mean that they are good company to everyone at every time. Even with all the powerful spiritual practices we'd been given by the gurus of this path -- including meditation, chanting, selfless service, scriptural study, self inquiry, and more -- there was often a whole lot of pettiness going on in the spiritual community itself. As my first guru used to say, the doors are open for anyone to come here, so don't think that just because someone is on this path that the person must be a saint. Perhaps the universal guide was separating me from this community so I could open to new avenues of spiritual growth -- not necessarily by finding other outer paths, but by taking refuge inside my own sweet soul, the spark of God's divinity that is said to shine within every human being.
I began to experience life on two different levels, with a kind of dual awareness. On one hand, I did have this higher yogic perspective of surrender, detachment, and faith; and at the same time, I knew that it was meant for me to also personally experience all the potential emotions these events would invoke inside of me. On one hand, I was peacefully watching these experiences of physical pain and emotional abandonment without personal attachment, and on the other hand I was experiencing and feeling the pain and sadness. Sometimes I wondered if I was enlightened or depressed, because both levels would be coexisting within my awareness at the same time -- taking place on different levels of my mind, heart, and soul.
I think this kind of contemplative processing often happens when people are confronted with really difficult experiences, and it may explain why so many who have undergone devastating experiences begin to reach for the divine in ways they never did before. Sometimes burdens are sent into our lives specifically to disrupt our complacency and to get us to feel certain emotions that may also relate to other experiences we've had in our lives, our childhood, or even perhaps our past lives, so we can process and grow from and beyond them.
The unbearable challenges of life can shake us out of ourselves, and lead us into deeper layers of our greater selves. It's as though our ego layers get beat up by the challenging events and feelings until they step aside and reveal the pure gems of pristine awareness that, according to great spiritual masters including my gurus, come inherently as part of the package with every human life. As my guru would say in his main message, "God dwells within you, as you." Although, I'd often, semi-humorously, add my own tag line, "God dwells within you, as you, in spite of you!"
While sitting quietly for so many months in the space created by this whirlpool of events, and mostly resting in the eye of this storm, I contemplated the possibility that this might be my time to leave this world. After all, I had such a long list of physical ailments. It seemed that my whole immune and adrenal systems had just shut down. I had been going to one doctor or the other nearly every day, and still, one thing or the other was hurting every day -- from the back pain to the ear infections to all the other ailments and effects of medicines and treatments.
I actually felt fine about the idea of leaving. I'd made peace with death many years earlier, and really had experienced a great life, including the wonderful ten years of monastic life and the exciting Hollywood adventures. I wasn't close to any family or friends, especially once the rumor hit, and there was really nothing else that I felt had to be accomplished before I left this world.
I began to settle into this idea one evening while meditating, when a booming, voice of God experience took place in my consciousness.
In an inner voice, with a similar tone to the voice of God that tells Moses to take off his shoes because he was on holy ground in the Ten Commandments movie, I was told, "First you have to share what you've learned."
As this powerful instruction arose within my soul, I was lifted up out of myself into a view of my life as patterns of events and experiences through time. From a birds-eye point of view, I saw the variety of life experiences I'd had -- from studying psychology so intently as a child, to studying neuroscience in college, to living ten years of monastic life while deeply exploring some of the greatest wisdom of all time, to working in Hollywood with so many talented people and projects that had definitely taught me how to make creative expressions interesting and entertaining. If I could only combine the psychology insights and spiritual wisdom with Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers entertainment value, perhaps I'd be able to offer something unique and wonderful to the world. This command pierced and entered my mind, heart, and soul: "First you have to share what you've learned."
In the same way that I would have obeyed a direct command from my guru, I had now received this command, directly from. . . from where? From God? From my own inner Self? A guardian Angel? I didn't quite know, but I could tell that it was from the divine. It is often said that the purpose of the relationship with one's guru is to take you to God, and this is what was happening to me as I sat surrendering to the idea of leaving this life. My relationship to my beloved guru had expanded into this relationship with the universal guru, with God, and with my own divine inner wisdom. My understanding was that I would write a book sharing what I'd learned, and then I would leave.
I began to write.
The first book took about a year to complete. It was called Conscious Evolution: Breaking the Myth of Egocentricity, which I later changed to Breakthrough Consciosness. It was a philosophical book that ended up being too obtuse for many readers to follow. I sent it to quite a few agents and publishers, and actually made it out of the slush pile in many cases, receiving letters from senior editors and vice presidents of some major, large publishers. The basic response was that the book was good, or even excellent, but that they'd only consider publishing these kinds of books with authors who have already been successfully published with a "platform" following, or who have those all-important education letters after their names.
I created a stack of these rejection letters, and continued to refine and send the book out. Eventually, it became clear that I'd fulfilled part of the command in terms of writing what I'd learned, but had not fulfilled the part about sharing it, because the book I'd written was not accessible to most people, and showed no signs of being published. After pouring my heart and soul into writing this book, and with the advice of a publishing-savvy acquaintance, I realized that the only way to fulfill this command would be to put the whole book on a shelf and begin from scratch, sharing not only what I'd learned, but also the circumstances through which I'd learned them.
The book would be an autobiography, and I would call it Never to Return, in part because my understanding at that time was that after the book was completed and I'd shared what I'd learn, I would be leaving this world.
But, not so fast. . .
On to Chapter Thirty-Eight
Back to The Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Awakening
Chapter 2: Never to Return
Chapter 3: I Chose This?
Chapter 4: Through the Years
Chapter 5: Exploring the Unconscious
Chapter 6: Faith-Healer
Chapter 7: Hidden Persuaders
Chapter 8: The Threshold of Life
Chapter 9: When the Student is Ready
Chapter 10: Magical Meeting
Chapter 11: Toward the One
Chapter 12: Who is Shiva?
Chapter 13: Destiny Calls
Chapter 14: Winter Wonderland
Chapter 15: The Happy Pauper
Chapter 16: This Karmic Dance
Chapter 17: Stoking the Inner Fire
Chapter 18: The Fruits of Surrender
Chapter 19: That Gracious Glance
Chapter 20: How Could He Be Gone?
Chapter 21: From Heart to Heart
Chapter 22: Get a Job
Chapter 23: Smash the Idol
Chapter 24: Clothed in Devotion
Chapter 25: Nemesis
Chapter 26: Who Are You Calling Jad?
Chapter 27: A Perfect Mistake
Chapter 28: She Still Thinks She Did It!
Chapter 29: Taming the Beast
Chapter 30: Undo What You Have Done
Chapter 31: The Great Guiding Force
Chapter 32: The Wish Fulfilling Tree
Chapter 33: Where is the Key?
Chapter 34: The Hollywood Chronicles
Chapter 35: A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to Nirvana
Chapter 36: Love, Betrayal, and the Unseen Hand of God
Chapter 37: An Inner Command
Chapter 38: Cardiff by the Sea
Chapter 39: Miracles and Great Beings
Chapter 40: Shiva's Fiery Dance
Chapter 41: A Shifting Path
Chapter 42: Cheering up Nine Swamis
Chapter 43: Death Threat
Chapter 44: Spirituality For Dummies
Chapter 45: A Real Angel
Chapter 46: Send in the Clowns
Chapter 47: Dispassion and Death's Door
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