Growing up in the "I am"

I didn't really think to much about the fact that my parents religion was much different than anyone else's until I reached about 4 or 5 years of age. Then my parents began to warn me about saying anything about our religion to people. Now you have to realize that I was 4 years old in 1952 and things were not at all like they are now in the U.S. So having a non-mainstream religion was almost as bad or worse than having no religion at all. People always seemed to look very closely when one was asked about their ethnicity and their religion back then. There was always this sort of "Are you for us or against us?" kind of paranoid attitude back then. It definitely was not okay to be different in any way. People who were different often were just found dead somewhere even during the 1950s. So appearing to be "Mainstream" meant a better chance you would still be alive the next day or year. Toleration didn't really mean much back then it was mostly just lip service. So unless you actively protected your minority status by not talking about it whether it was religion or ethnicity it could get you killed, maimed or just shut out of some job or school you wanted to go to.

So, by age 6 I learned to tell people that my religion was a lot like Christian Science. If they asked more I simply repeated "It's a lot like Christian Science." And if they wanted to know more I just pretended not to know my parents religion. As I grew older only my most trusted friends would I let know anything about my religion and parents of friends knew nothing. This kept me and my parents happy and alive and safe. Any minority religion at that time like Buddhism, Hinduism, mystical Christian, New Age or anything out of the mainstream just wasn't entirely safe to say you were a part of in the 1950s. However, staring in the mid 1960s many of these same "Minority" U.S. religions became "Groovy" and people everywhere had to start up and take notice and minority religions of all shapes and sizes became "sheik" and "cool" and groovy. I don't know if the "I am" ever became like this but the spinoffs did and so it seems like everyone was suddenly talking about the "Violet Flame" and having "Violet Flame" parties to burn off everyone's karma and to check out past lifetimes. And by the way "What's your sign?" So at least on the California Coast among college kids the violet Flame and "Organic Foods" and "UFOS" and the "Space Brothers" became cool and groovy and I had a lot less problems talking about growing up in the "I am" than when I was 6. So by age 21 I was groovy too.