In early November, I discovered I was pregnant. Two weeks later, Paul and I decided to get married. In early December, I miscarried. By Christmas, the wedding was off.
I don’t feel the need to describe such events in detail, and they are not terribly relevant to the story. However, they did change me. How could they not? It was an emotional roller coaster like I’ve never experienced before or since. To say that it triggered some soul searching on my part would be an understatement.
I never told Harry about any of these events, and I couldn’t have even if I had wanted to. Harry had immersed himself in his writing, and we never talked long enough to get to such details.
We spoke on the phone several times in the weeks immediately following my move to California, but after that there was no contact between us. Harry’s not really a phone person, and to be honest neither am I. So I wasn’t terribly bothered by our lack of communication. But it would have been nice to have someone else besides Paul to talk to.
As the new year began, Paul and Ravi started their own company. Paul has always been a whiz with small electronic devices – miniature cameras, microphones, stuff like that. Keep in mind, I am not into these things and never really paid too much attention to what they were doing. But Paul was always playing with his little electronic toys, and Ravi was an expert with software. And when the two of them got together and started brainstorming, their enthusiasm was boundless.
So Paul and Ravi quit their jobs and started up a company that designed devices and software for capturing and analyzing audio and video. That’s pretty much all I knew about it at the time. Ravi is by far the most organized, motivated person I have ever met – and I have met some organized and motivated people in my life. But Ravi was incredible, and his drive, coupled with Paul’s creativity, led to almost instant success.
By late spring they had lined up clients and begun working with a contract manufacturer to produce their devices. As I said, I paid little attention to what they were doing at that time, as my attention was elsewhere. While they were busy designing things and filing for patents and talking up their product, I was moving in a very different direction.
The changes and events I had experienced since the previous fall – the drive out west with Harry, the new living environment, the beginning and ending of my pregnancy and potential marriage to Paul (which would happen eventually, by the way) had caused me to reflect upon and delve into the deepest parts of myself. I struggled to make sense of all that had happened over the previous eight months, and I needed to find some meaning in all of it. I needed to feel that it was all leading somewhere, that there was some purpose behind it. I needed to know that I wasn’t just drifting aimlessly, that I wouldn’t end up smashed upon the rocks or washed up on the beach. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
So this was my soul searching phase. And I got down into it. Deep down into it. And who did I talk to about it? Nobody. I had nobody to talk to. The one person who could have helped me had dropped out of my life. He was living two thousand miles away, and he didn’t answer his phone. In fact, he no longer had a phone number. It had been disconnected. For all I knew, Harry had somehow lost his mind, gone crazy, and would never again be a part of my life.
Things were bad. I hit the bottom. I was experiencing what Harry had often referred to as “the dark night of the soul,” which I had always rolled my eyes at. It sounded like more of Harry’s dramatic spiritual jargon. But those months in California, I finally understood what he meant. I was in my dark night, alright. Do you know what I’m talking about?
Do you know what it feels like to be rudderless? To wonder who you are and what you are doing here?
Excuse me for being dramatic, but I’m trying to convey something that I have since understood to be not only common, but necessary. Necessary? Yes, necessary. Let me explain.
When life is working for us, we tend not to question. When we feel good about where we are in life, about our circumstances and our future, we don’t ask big questions. We don’t wonder about such things.
It’s only when the game breaks down, when life “stops working”, that we take a step back and consider the bigger picture. Perhaps it’s out of necessity, in an effort to continue living, that we search for a wider perspective of our lives, of ourselves. I had always thought that this was the role of religion – to tell you who and what you are, why you are here, what your purpose is. But several years earlier, Harry had told me that religion can only take you so far. It can lead you to a doorway of sorts, but it will not take you through it.
You have to make that journey on your own. You have to pick up your cross and bear it. Jesus can’t carry it for you.
I remember being somewhat taken aback when Harry spoke so bluntly about the distortions within Christianity and the other world religions. According to him, the vast majority of people who follow a religion are unaware of the deeper meaning within their own religion. I’ll see if I can accurately convey what Harry told me, and I apologize if I misrepresent his points.
According to Harry, the core truth at the heart of every religion is the same: each of us is an extension of the Creator, which is the source of everything and everyone. There is a source, which some call God, some call All That Is, and there are many other names. And apparently, this source chooses to experience itself in infinite ways, from infinite perspectives, as individual parts. Each of us is one of those parts, and each part contains the whole, the source, and is that source, expressing itself through each part.
Harry called this the divine dichotomy – that each of us is the whole, the source, while being separate from it at the same time. Or at least perceiving ourselves to be separate from it.
And so all religions, according to Harry, are providing information in order to lead the individual to the realization that they are already one with their Creator, and that there is nothing one needs to do to experience that union other that to realize it. And the process of realizing that you are one with your Creator, that you are the Creator, expressing itself through you, is the spiritual path.
Now, please keep in mind that I am paraphrasing here, and that I may have thoroughly distorted Harry’s perspective on all of this, but these are the things I pondered during the dark times through which I struggled during my first year in California. I had moved out there in anticipation of joy and a new beginning, and within a few months I was tossed into a very dark place.
But there is good news! I did come out of it. I did survive. And in the process, I learned far more about myself than I ever could have otherwise. I came to realizations that I can’t possibly describe in words. You’ll just have to figure them out for yourselves, if you haven’t already. Those who have gone through the process I am describing and have come out the other side know what I am talking about. And those who haven’t, well, maybe your path will be different.
But this was my path. And as hard as it was, I now see it as having been necessary. I had been so rooted in what I thought I was, in what I thought this world was, that the only way to get beyond it was to bring it all crashing down around me, to see it for what it really is: an illusion.
I came to understand that I am not really a confused human being, struggling to get by in a harsh world. I am a manifestation of the Creator, joyfully translating spirit into matter, into form. And from that perspective, I can see that I have embarked upon a glorious journey - a gift to my Creator.
This is some of what I learned during my first year in California. And like most people who have emerged from their own dark confusion and found a clearer picture of who and what they are and why they are here, I resolved to help others find such realization for themselves.
I wanted to tell Harry what I had been through, what I had come to understand, and at first I was frustrated by his lack of accessibility. But then it occurred to me that I, myself, was choosing in some way and on some level to separate myself from him, at least temporarily.
Perhaps Harry knew that it was time for me to “get down into it”, as he would said. Perhaps he knew that I had to find my own two feet, spiritually speaking, without running to him every other day and asking him to explain exactly what I was feeling and going through.
I don’t know for sure, and we never discussed it. It’s even possible that he was going through similar things back in Ohio. He may have cut himself off from the outside world for similar reasons. But whatever the case may be, I had arrived at a perception of myself which stood in stark contrast to the way I had seen myself previously. I was no longer looking for things outside of me to define who I was, to point out the direction I was to move in next. I had found a source within myself that did not depend on anything outside of me. I was becoming a sovereign being, less and less affected by the winds and storms that we call the drama of life.
My next step was to somehow harness my new enthusiasm for life and for the human experience. Not only did my recent spiritual progress awaken within me an intense appreciation of myself, but it also sparked a passion for my fellow human beings. Everywhere I looked I saw amazing, masterful creators who were complete unaware of who and what they were. They were still seeing themselves as I used to see myself – as lowly human beings struggling to exist and to make some sort of sense of their existence, struggling to please themselves and the people in their lives and perhaps even God – the God they believed was watching and judging their every move.
Or worse yet, the people who did not believe in any sort of existence outside of this earthly one. Those were the people who could benefit the most from a wider perspective, from the knowledge that there is more to us than what we see here.
I am trying to convey to you what I began to feel back then and what I continue to feel to this day. It is that enthusiasm which inspired and motivated me to pursue the project Harry and I had talked about up in Oregon: a retreat, a place to go to talk about these things, to ponder these things, to dig and discover what lies underneath our human existence.
The religions of the world are all pointing to this same thing, and I was beginning to share Harry’s desire to stimulate and inspire others to discover the truth within themselves. And the idea of creating a place where people could do such things, in an open minded and creative way, filled me with joy.
By the time spring rolled in, I knew why I had moved to the West Coast. I knew where I wanted to direct my time and energy. I now had a purpose, and I was happier, by far, than I had ever been. And it wasn’t a happiness based on circumstances, or on what others thought of me, or on something I had accomplished. It was based on nothing more than my excitement about who I am and about the potential and the desire that is within me.
Have you ever felt that?
Have you ever felt intense joy simply because you exist?
Some of you are nodding your heads and smiling with recognition.
Others are shaking their heads and wondering what in the world this woman is talking about.
Either way, you are exactly where you should be at this time. It’s like Harry has often said:
Your path is your path, and there is absolutely no hurry.
We have all of eternity, you know!
