The Decision

Everything Pivots...

Yers Truly, 17 years old photo, Peter Little

This is probably a short one as I started dictating this in a parking lot whilst waiting for my Mary who went off into the store...

I had a memory recently that hadn't surfaced for years. That has been happening a bit lately. I don't dwell on it too much, but I am to understand it is an age thing. Perhaps...

The memory goes back quite a way, actually some 55 years. This memory is of an event that was vital to my life, then and now and to how things have transpired since those days so long ago.

Back then I was involved with a spiritual group/Ashram where I had learned the basics of meditation and other disciplines. The philosophy of the group was an odd mixture of Theosophy, Hinduism and other Spiritual and Religious practices. Really at that age I was a bit of a spiritual sponge, hungry for something beyond psychedelia and the military Protestant upbringing that I had grown up in. (All the base protestants in the one chapel, no exceptions...)

I have been introduced to the world of psychics and reincarnation a good 5 years earlier by my mother as she started expanding her own spiritual quest just before she divorced my father (they were separated, he was living a state away from us on the base he was assigned to.) She started taking me to psychics at the age of 12 who told me what my previous incarnations were and what my goals in this lifetime was supposed to be and the karmic ties etc. etc. As a preteen, I was not quite sure what to make of all of this. One psychic, an elderly gentleman (to me!) of around 60 years old told me that one of the major past lives that I had was as a physician of the Pharaoh. (I of course saw Yul Brynner in my mind's eye...) I really had no idea what to make of it all.

 Eventually, she became involved with a gentleman a city away, who owned a photographic/camera store. He was nice, and introduced my mother to Morey Bernstein, the author of "The Search for Bridey Murphy". As a short recap this book was about age regression by the use of hypnotherapy where supposedly Bernstein took a woman through hypnosis back to a previous life in Ireland in the 19th century. 

She thought it a smashing idea that Morey would hypnotize me and see about my past lives. A session was set up, and he took me back to the age of six. Another one was set up but we never got past the age of three because there was some sort of memory that was a trauma for me and he rapidly backed me out of the state... All I remember is an overwhelming fear/grief. I came out of it quite shaken... Such was my early introduction to metaphysics/occult. It was formative for sure.

Anyway… 2 years later after these metaphysical adventures I left home (at 14) , I was living on the streets busking and working in a Beat Coffee shop… Over the next 3 years I eventually made my way through Big Sur, The Haight Ashbury, the Boulder scene, and various places in between before ending up in a small town in northern California with the previously stated metaphysical/occult group.

By this time, I was 17 years old and had started to reenter society (at least I thought on my own terms.) I had returned to high school, and I was looking forward to college along the way.

I was still deeply involved with the Group/Ashram, but I also realized that there were changes going on within me. I was deeply drawn to a couple of people within the Ashram who had monastic backgrounds. In many ways it seemed very attractive. The idea of devoting one’s life to meditation and prayer, taking the vows, etc.…

Out walking one early evening while I was debating all these conflicts and drives, I found myself on standing a corner in this small town...

 Should I go to the ashram/occult center, or should I go to my friend's house and hang out and listen to music? It was a Friday night in mid-November when I found myself in this position. I stood there being pulled this way and that by my inner conflicts and drives. I hesitated, and then hesitated again. As I stood there this simple decision took on overtones that were highly charged my mind if I went to the ashram, I would take on the monastic life and spend this lifetime in pursuing the deep spiritual. If I went to my friend's home, I would live in the world… perhaps having a family? Children/Child?

I stood there being torn between these two poles for what seemed an eternity. I found myself sweating in the freezing temperature of that early evening.

Clarity finally came to me in a great wave: what I wanted was to dive into life fully and damn the consequences. I turned away from the ashram and walked to my friend Steve's house on that November evening. I think I was going over to hear the third Jimi Hendrix album, and it was a wonderful evening with Steve and his family.

I have looked back over the years and with the life that I have led I have no regrets for that decision that evening. I was made to engage with the world. I have lived a life of wonders and love. A wonderful life companion, a son, and I still mediate to this day. Everything is.

Pax,

Gwyllm

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