Picture: Climbing yesterday on Ladders Trail in Painted Canyon in southern California
Being it is my birthday I have been put into a mood of remembrance. My first memory for the life of this body begins with being in the womb of my mother. I remember the sounds of her heartbeat, the comfort of the womb. I was also aware of who I was as a soul. I had foreknowledge of aspects of my life to come, and recent memories of what my life was before coming into this body. I knew that this life would be difficult compared to the life I had before, and I had some trepidation about it.
Other memories come in. The difficulties I anticipated were of a more psychological and spiritual nature, for my physical needs were taken care of, though I found being in the physical body a challenge compared to the light body I had before. I had a loving mother and a dutiful father, two older brothers who seemed to live in a different world, being just that much older than I.
I remember our family’s first television, when a “play date” consisted of our mother throwing us out of the house and telling us not to come back in until lunch. Tether ball games at the neighbors, basketball in the driveway, playing catch by the hour imagining being Yogi Berra or Roger Maris of my favorite New York Yankees. There was the excitement of the first color television and Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, and watching the Beetles for the first time on Ed Sullivan’s “Really Big Shew.” Imagination turned the whole house into a flying saucer, and made me a general of armies with strategies to plan. Getting up early to watch rockets take off from Cape Canaveral, then almost with held breath watching the first steps taken on the moon.
Then there was my first car, a jeep inherited from my older brother, then in the Marines. Playing baseball, football and wrestling were major themes, unfortunately academics were ignored (one teacher commented that I did more work trying to get out of doing school work than if I just did it, and I rejoined, that was true, but it was more fun this way! What could he do? Not until college and I was paying for my education did I take it seriously and had to make up for all those lessons I had not learned earlier!
The first time I “fell in love” took me into a new world. The break up of that love took me into another new world that had been germinating all my life, a spiritual awakening. It was not my second birth, but it was the dedicated gestation period to being born again that would take many years to accomplish. Learning to drive a semi-truck, moving to the west side of the mountains, working for a year or so then going to one more year of college as I could afford it, traveling to Europe and Africa, and of course meeting Mother Hamilton which stands above all other life-experiences.
It is amazing now to slide in review over so many years, consolidating so many experiences. Life takes on an entirely new view when seen from the rear view mirror, smoothing out bumps, soothing wounds, and clarifying lessons. What seemed an eternity of time then, seems only a blip on the screen now; remembered but pacified. One other thing, all these experiences now are placed in a context of meaning that was oftentimes absent at the time. I see the great adventure of this life as refining and purifying consciousness, to make it ready for a true New Birth.
And this is the great lesson for me, from the time I was in my mother’s womb to today, the meaning of life found in the evolution of consciousness and its ultimate merging with Divine Consciousness. And really, it is finding union with the Divine that places all life-experience into its proper role. All life serves one ultimate, glorious purpose that makes it all worthwhile. And that is what is monumentally clear to me as I turn 62.