On the Friday after the seminar, before my article appeared, I called my brother Paul in California, and told him that I had had a dream in which Bub said, “The first 40 years were mine. These are yours.” I was 40 years old at the time. So far, he’s right on target.
But what had happened in 1987? Had the seminar really changed anything? Certainly it had not, as I had hoped it would, changed everything. But my expectations – my hopes – showed my inexperience. Only much later did I realize that transformation, like aging, like maturing, like anything worthwhile, comes gradually. You don’t return from visiting a sacred site instantly and utterly transformed. Transformation comes about more like infection. The change comes gradually, perhaps unnoticed except in retrospect.
That change came in little bits, not obviously connected. I think of Stephanie, and Starborn, and Suni Dunbar, of Fran Slocumb, and dreams, of a “New Age” party in Virginia Beach, and Jess Stearn, and of John Nelson and Bob Friedman. They were all results of my deciding to follow the hint provided by my miraculous healing.
- At some point Stephanie was seated next to me at the seminar. She described her psychic experiences and I was fascinated. This would have important, and unfortunate, consequences. At the time I had never heard of the concept of “trans channeling.” (Not “trance channeling,” but “trans channeling.” It means contact that begins on a 6th chakra level and moves immediately to the 2nd. This is a formula for lots of trouble for the unwary!) From being interested in her as a psychic, I moved quickly into believing that I was in love with her, and began an epistolary relationship. She lived in western Pennsylvania. I was living in the Hampton Roads Virginia area. I had a wife and children, and was not prepared to rip up my life and begin again. So what kind of future did this promise? But I was experiencing (though not yet realizing) that I was not one thing, but several, not all of whom talked to each other
- Starborn. I never figured out how he did it, but somehow John Nelson mailed me a copy of his first novel quickly enough that it arrived in the morning mail at the office on the day after my article ran, He suggested that I might want to review it. I did read it, though I didn’t review it, and remembered the author’s name. John would become a good friend, but the immediate effect of this overture manifested later that year, with an introduction at a party.
- Suni Dunbar. I was invited to join a group of seminar attendees who wanted to meet on a regular basis, I think once a month, and I accepted. The first meeting wasn’t impressive, but I was too inhibited to say that Few people there seemed to really know what they were talking about. (One woman was talking about Kundalini, apparently thinking it was a physical snake. I very tentatively said that I didn’t think it was a snake, and I later learned that one of the women muttered, “Oh, so he does know something.”) Of all the women there – as I remember it, everyone there was a woman except me – the one who drew my attention was a woman named Suni Dunbar. She was old enough to have been my mother; it wasn’t a romantic attachment. But there was some link there, and we both knew it. The group soon ceased to mee, but Suni and I got into the habit of my going to her office in Virginia Beach every so often for a lunchtime talkfest.
- Fran Slocumb and dreams. Fran was a Jungian analyst. She sponsored a brown-bag luncheon to discuss Jung’s concepts, which had interested me ever since I stumbled across Modern Man in Search of a Soul in 1970. I seem to remember that I was invited because Suni and she were friends. In any case, after that luncheon, I had a dream. in three pieces. The first two laid out the roots of my major emotional problem. The third part consisted of Fran’s face smiling at me. I can take a hint. I called her up and arranged to begin a series of weekly sessions of dream analysis.
- A “New Age” party. In mid-summer, I was among those invited to a party in Virginia Beach to meet author Jess Stearn. A man came up to me and introduced himself as John Nelson, and I said something about his book. “Oh, so you did read it,” he said. “Let me introduce you to my publisher.:” And there, standing next to him, was a fairly short man with interesting eyes that seemed to have a quizzical expression, as if – I told him much later – he was saying, “Well, so you finally showed up.” And this was Bob Friedman, who would open so many doors and present so many challenges. Ahead of us was a long, complicated, productive, infuriating, satisfying, difficult, enlightening relationship.
These threads came at me one by one, seemingly unconnected, and only over time did they weave together, but the pattern they wove was a far cry from anything my life had been, or would have been, if I hadn’t spent a night watching a TV special, and then experiencing a healing, and then risking $300 to see what else might be in store. I had always wanted an extraordinary life. Earlier ventures hadn’t gone all that well. Now life was offering another opportunity. I couldn’t see its shape or its scope, but there was something there.