More than I knew at the time, my life was shaped and guided by others. Initially, of course, there was the family I grew up in, but here I refer to something else. My family provided the human warmth without which we can scarcely live, but their influence on my life must go largely unreported. Emotional warmth and shared curiosity leave little but anecdotal evidence for others.
But if our biological family provided the initial shaping, my journey from what I was to whatever it is that I am now depended heavily upon the following people, two of whom I never met, listed in the order of their appearance in my life:
- Colin Wilson (1970)
- Carl Jung (1970)
- Henry Thoreau (1970)
- Louis Meinhardt (1971)
- Suni Dunbar (1987)
- Bob Friedman (1987)
- Bob Monroe (1989)
- Ed Carter (1990)
- Kelly Neff (1992)
- Dana Redfield (1997)
- Nancy Ford (1998)
- Rita Warren (2000)
Again, this is a list, not of those who were important in my life, but of those who played a prominent part in the changes
Colin Wilson provided invisible companionship during long years when nothing else in my life seemed to support my feelings of something important, just behind the curtain. He continually reinforced me in a way no one else and nothing else did, for 25 years before we even met.
Carl Jung gradually shaped my view of who and what we are in this strange 3D life we lead. His was a very different viewpoint from mine: scientific, rigorously logical, careful in even his tentative conclusions, yet fearless and far-ranging. And everything I read and understood rang true.
Henry Thoreau articulated the longings I felt but did not yet understand. He set me to thinking in ways I might never have come to on my own. Like Colin’s books, Thoreau’s writing provided an invisible support.
Louis Meinhardt was my first teacher, the bridge — though at first well disguised — between imagination and reality.
Suni Dunbar. provided emotional support and a shared view of life. It amounted to effective mothering at a time when I needed it. For many years, she was a feminine presence that spanned the two worlds.
Bob Friedman provided an entry-point connecting the world of ideas and the world of people. We began from the shared experience of the Shirley MacLaine seminar, though we met only later. But as we came to know each other, over months of occasional shared lunches, we discovered something very simpatico between us. Ironic, in light of all our later difficulties, but there it was. And without Bob and the company we built, how could I have met the authors we worked with? How could I have entered that world as a participant rather than merely a spectator? And, not least, he introduced me to Bob Monroe and Monroe’s work
Bob Monroe provided a method, a language, and community. Immediately on meeting him (via Bob Friedman), I was fascinated with what he was doing and why he was doing it. As I read his books and did his programs, I saw a practical path to follow, finally. If you overlooked my analysis of Bob Monroe’s three books “Bob Monroe’s Journey,” I encourage you to go back and read it.
Ed Carter became an encouraging presence and a fellow explorer, repeatedly facilitating new beginnings. Not only did he help HRPC financially when we needed it, he encouraged me to do a Gateway Voyage at The Monroe Institute; he was actively interested in questioning the guys upstairs; he made it passible for me to do the Lifelines program that further changed my life.
Kelly Neff. She sent a manuscript about Jefferson’s wife, then took her courage in hand and told this unknown editor that she believed she had been Martha Jefferson, and said, “you are free to think me crazy if you want to,” We met seemingly fortuitously, just in time for her to put me in the right place to do the Gateway where everything opened up. There’s much more to be said about our complicated and tumultuous relationship, but it will have to wait for another post.
Dana Redfield. Dana, like Kelly a few years earlier, addressed herself to an unknown editor with her tale of experiences that were often mocked or merely disbelieved. How safe was it, in the 1990s, to tell a stranger that you had been abducted, repeatedly, by ETs? And beyond that ,hers was not just another story of alien abduction: The closer one looked, the more there was to be found. And as important as the experiences – more important, I would say – was the story of her hard life and its lessons, and the effect we came to have upon each other.
Nancy Ford. In ways that would be hard to express, Nancy has been the mental, emotional and – dare we say it? – spiritual companion I needed. It is one thing to have one’s perceptions change; it is another thing to live those changes, and I don’t know if it can be done alone. Dana used to say, “nobody crosses alone,” and each of these women – Suni, Kelly, Dana, Rita – gave me something intangible that men could not.
Rita Warren. Rita, like Suni, was old enough to have been my mother, and, like Suni, in some ways filled that role for me, which, as I have said more than once, enabled me to be the affectionate, dutiful son she had never had. Like Suni, Kelli, Dana, and Nancy, our interactions nourished me emotionally as well as intellectually. And of course the work that she and I accomplished together – unanticipated by either of us – laid the groundwork for ever more extensive changes.
And this’s the common denominator here: You don’t get transformed merely by changing your ideas. You change yourself, or perhaps we should say you allow yourself to be changed, and the process involves your emotional body at least as much as – probably more than – the mental body. Hence, the crucial importance of your friends, your brothers and sisters.
Nobody crosses alone.