My Path 5-24-09

When I was 4 years old we moved from Seattle to San Diego. My mother, her mother and I rode the train south in our own compartment. I wore a trenchcoat and had raggedy Ann and Andy doll and a
stuffed toy horse in my briefcase I carried along with comic books. If people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I was trained to tell them, "I want to be a gentleman." This was my Scottish grandmother's doing but I have found this way of thinking useful ever since. Because I have always been taught to be a wise gentleman throughout my life and to be strong and yet kind I have never had to go to jail even overnight like many of my friends over the years. I was taught to use my mind like a weapon rather than my fists or a knife or a gun(even though I was taught to be a crack shot with a rifle by the age of 8 or 9. I could hit almost anything at about 100 yards by then because my grandfather was always a hunter and because my Dad was also a crack shot with a rifle too).

When I turned 6 in April 1954 we moved to Tujunga in the foothills near Los Angeles. My parents were put in charge of a mystical Christian Church that believed in reincarnation and many of the mystical ideas found in India and shared some beliefs with Self Realization Fellowship founded by Paramahansa Yogananda in I belive 1914. He was one of the first successful Swamis in the United States and met many famous people including Luther Burbank then. We often ate at the successful vegetarian SRF restaurants in Hollywood and Encinitas, California(near San Diego) in the late 50s and early 1960s. My father had been a vegetarian since 1934 and my mother since 1936. My father was a vegetarian because of health reasons and had studied with Paul Bragg who had been a student of Bernard McFadden. Also, Paul Bragg was also Jack Lalane's teacher as well.(remember Jack Lalane's glamour stretchers?). Or now the late night informercials selling his fruit and vegetable juicers?

Anyway, my parents were put in charge of the Los Angeles Church of this religion that consisted then of about 750 to 1000 regular adherents in the Los Angeles County area and hundreds of other churches of this denomination worldwide. In the summers my father would play the part of John the Baptist in the "I am" Come Pageant, usually every summer in July or August in an amphitheatre in Mt. Shasta, California. This pageant is still put on once a year at this time today. My father was in it from about 1946 until about 1974 when he decided to do something else instead. My parents were in charge as lay ministers of this church from 1954 until 1960 when my mother's father died and she had a mini nervous breakdown because of it. I began working for my father starting in 1960 every summer as an electrician's helper and he and I worked for many famous Movie and TV directors and he met Greer Garson, Annette Funicello, Sandra Dee, Bud Abbott, and many other famous personalities from the mid 1950s until he moved to San Diego in 1969. I found that movie actors were very special people but directors and producers usually weren't as nice of people as actors. Whether the actors were always acting or not it is hard to say. But directors were very controlling and so were producers and could be very difficult to work with for trades people trying to please them.

As a child I wasn't very happy that my parents were either running the church or my Dad was always off being an electrical contractor. However, usually one day a week(saturday) we would often go up to the mountains for a hike on the Silver Moccasin trail near Twin Peaks in the Angeles National Forest or in winter go sledding or skiing in the same area or if it were a really warm day go to the beach and swim at Santa Monica, Malibu or Zuma Beaches.(I almost drowned at Zuma Beach before I could swim at age 8). However, by 9 or 10 I was a self instructed swimmer at the Verdugo Olympic sized swimming pool in MOntrose(near Glendale, California).

I learned slowly to visualize things like my parents taught me. If you want something in your life it helps to see the thing or person you want in your life. I was taught this in regard to prayer in order to go into a prayer fusion with God and to then manifest things. This kind of thing when scientifically analyzed is more like invoking things into your life that you want as you experience yourself at one with God. It is less about being like a little child and asking God for something. It is more about being an adult and one with God Consciousness and then making things happen. However, I learned as I grew up that this sort of stuff is very powerful and not to be trifled with. One must first be sure of having a good motivation before doing anything in this direction or else one can make ones life very difficult by accident.

The caution with all this would be: Be careful what you wish for because you may get it.

People wish for all sorts of things and only later realize they wished for the wrong thing. Some things, situations, people, that you might wish for are not in the end what you really want. So be very careful what you wish for because if you wish wrong it could result in the early end of your life.

However, the other point I would like to make is: nothing ventured nothing gained. This is one of the most important rules of life. If you don't make your life happen no one else will either!