My Story

It's hard to make complete sense of one's life for most people. Even all the different people we are since we are born along the way. And in my case between the time I was born and December 1994 I moved a total of around 50 times, 5 times before I was 5 years old. So, as you meet new people wherever you live, you change sometimes to deal with and to fit into new situations and new friendships and just to survive. So, tonight I was telling my story from a spiritual point of view of what happened to me growing up and found a kindred spirit in a good friend of my wife's and I that was one of our maids of honor at my wife's and my wedding in Yosemite at the old  Chapel there almost 20 years ago now. It's amazing how a kindred spirit can make sense of your life sometimes in ways you never expected.

My story from my experience of it spiritually speaking began around Christmas  when Archangel Michael and his band of angels appeared to me while I was 2 and in my Scottish Grandmother's lap in an old fashioned soft stuffed rocking chair that was popular in the 1940s and into the 1950s back then in Seattle, Washington. She was singing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" with great gusto when the Archangels all appeared in a large ball of light about 10 to 15 feet in diameter. They all wore jeweled armor and all had shoulder length hair and they smiled at me and I was healed then of whooping cough that I had been dying from before then.

Next, I took a fall around age 9 in a canyon below Chilao in the Angeles National forest and hit my head on a rock. This likely gave me a concussion because I had a terrible headache and was throwing up a lot. My father made me get up and walk three miles back to his truck because I was too big for him to carry that far and there were no helicopters then to fly into the canyon to save me because it was 1957. So, I walked while having a splitting headache while crying and throwing up all the way the 3 miles back to the truck. I never went to a doctor because my Dad didn't believe in that even though now I know I likely had a concussion on the back of my head. At age 10 I started to have seizures about every 6 months or so. The first one I was about 10 years old and it was on a Sunday after I had delivered all my newspapers on my bicycle (The Glendale New Press). I went back to sleep after delivering my papers between 3 am and 5:30 am and I woke up after a terrible dream where I was strangled by a black hand in my dreams on the floor with my head in my mother's lap. She just said, "You had a bad dream son. Go Back to sleep".

I didn't know I had had a seizure because no one told me, I only knew I had had a nightmare. Over time this sort of experience repeated itself about every 6 months whenever I was stressed out over taking an important test at school because at this time I was an A student and was an overachiever. As I started having seizures every 6 months I was able to stay on the honor roll until I was 12 and went into Junior High School. So, my grades weren't as good during Junior High as in Grade school because I was sort of suicidal and unhappy a lot from my medical condition and stressed I might die from it and my parents were worried to so they didn't pressure me for A's as much because they were told by my doctor that stress caused these seizures more. At that time we didn't know what caused the seizures. Then at age 14 I had a seizure that I knew was coming so I jumped out of bed and ran for my parents room because I was terrified. But because I wasn't in my right mind or in my body right because of the seizure coming on me I ran into the open door end of my bedroom door and broke my nose and woke up in a pool of Blood around my head. My Dad said to me, "You need some religion under your belt, son" as I woke up while he had a butter knife in my mouth trying to pry open my mouth so I wouldn't bite or swallow my tongue. So, I became active in my parents religion and started to pray a lot so I wouldn't die. They were Mystical Christians. My father passed away in 1985 and my mother in 2008 and were at that time lay ministers (people who were ministers but who had other careers to support themselves financially) at their church in Los Angeles on Hope Street. They were in charge of this church from 1954 until 1960 when I turned 12. By age 15 I had had a year to get really good at praying to God to stay alive and not die. And so when I was in my dream and being attacked in my dream by literally thousands and thousands of people as armies I invoked God to come live in my body with me and save me and he did. It was sort of a David and Goliath Story and experience for me because suddenly God came into my body and I was suddenly the General of all the armies who were attacking me and going to kill me the moment before. So, I felt this incredible rush from going from victim to conqueror in one moment. When I woke up from this experience with God inside my body with me I never ever had another seizure ever again. God has stayed with me all the time in my body ever since. It was really scary at first until I got used to it. It took me about 15 years to be comfortable with it all the time.

It was sort of feeling like I had a Tiger by the tail and if I ever let go that God would eat me and I would disappear forever. But, by age 30 I had learned that having God living 24 hours a day in your body with you is a Blessing and never a curse. But it is very powerful and sometimes terrifyingly scary until you get used to it. So, be careful what you ask for if you ask God to live in your body with you. The other thing is a lot more is expected of you than most people when you invoke God to live in your body with you all the time.

And the other thing is even now I often don't know what is expected of me so God takes me near death and then shows me what he wants and so I sort of keep coming back sort of like Lazarus from near death experiences. So, one might have to learn to live with these kinds of experiences if they want God to live in their body with them full time and this definitely takes some getting used to.

After experiencing all this I really have a lot of compassion for all the people spoken of in the Old and New testaments because it is pretty overwhelming having God in your life 24 hours a day.

And when People say "God Fearing" I think that is for people who are good only because they are afraid of God. I think there is another level that one can aspire to. And this is joyfully doing God's Will. When you develop this knack of Joyfully doing God's business there is literally no limit to the positive things that you can be involved in at God's behest. So, if God lives in your body and you are okay with allowing this then there is no limit to the Good you can do in any given moment. Because in God's universe time and space are only rules of a game. And since I have realized that the Universe is literally the mind of God then we are only characters in God's play. So, life is a serious Game designed by God. If you don't take the game seriously enough, you die. If you take it too seriously, you die. So, a balanced approach of pragmatism, practicality, compassion and yet enough seriousness to stay alive through anything that comes is necessary to honor God.