Chapter Summaries

Remaining silent as if in a trance, the vision of a dark-haired woman transported my memory beyond my little life. The comforting presence of my mother in the kitchen faded into oblivion as love and sorrow engulfed my memory. But how could a six-year-old articulate such profound feelings of the horrible loss of love, so nobody knew.

Her face, known to me as absolute beauty. Her hair, distinctly charcoal, resembling burnt wood in a campfire. Her lips, the embrace comforting my soul, filling mine to completeness. Quietly, accompanying her gaze, the ever flowing sadness from the loss of love permeating my memory.

This chapter recounts my lifelong secret quest to find this woman from a past life, not knowing if she even existed. Hundreds of charcoal sketches poured out of me through childhood, my LSD years all the way through high school, keeping the memory alive.

Then the sketching stopped and she faded into the background for many years until a profound vision crashed my psyche with ferocity.

This chapter recounts the transformative moment when I first experienced Divine Presence as a radiant white light, marking a profound shift in my awareness. At just eleven years old, I had mastered the art of slipping away unnoticed from Saint Anthony’s Catholic School. On one such occasion, my journey through the New River Tunnel and a seemingly mundane stop at a 7/11 became the backdrop for an extraordinary event.

Leaving the store, an ethereal shadow around my body was revealed and then peeled away, lifting me upward into a tunnel of brilliant light. Time and space dissolved, and I found myself engulfed in the unconditional love of an eternal being. In that moment, I was home—completely at one with Divine Presence. When the light faded, I found myself back at school, seated at my desk, as if no time had passed. My heart brimmed with love and compassion, particularly for a boy often bullied, and from that day, I refused to partake in the taunting.

In the days that followed, I experienced another profound calling. While playing baseball, a voice beckoned me, “Come to me.” In a trance-like state, I was drawn to a church where I sat in stillness, overcome by the love of Divine presence. These visits became a weekly occurrence for months, filling my mind with purity and eradicating my mischievous behaviors.

This period of my life was marked by a deep awareness of my soul—a union between myself and the Divine. Encapsulated in a bubble of love, I began to see the beauty and light within everyone. The phrase, “The Divine in me honors the Divine in you,” became a lived truth as my soul recognized the inherent divinity in all.

The Divine in me honors the Divine in you.

Unaware that my spiritual bubble was slowly dissipating, I served as an alter boy over the next year, aspiring to become a priest. Believing they were called to priesthood through similar experiences, I revered them as inspiration. But they never spoke of their encounters, so neither did I.

A sudden presence snapped my head to the left. A dark shadow loomed, seemingly piercing through the roof as it surged straight at me. Fear raced through my body for the first time in months and my gaze locked onto the advancing cloud of darkness entering me. Snuffing out the light, I was me again.

Dismayed, I turned to Father Rocko for help. He appeared changed, now an overweight drunkard with a bulbous nose, hiding behind a facade of religious piety. Disgust and the sting of betrayal consumed me. Feeling utterly abandoned, the presence of the Divine within me was dying, fading into the background behind some dark obstruction. The reality of lightness turned into a dense heavy illusion, stripped of Divine energy.

“This is not real. Where are you? What’s happening? ” I cried out. Turning away from the grotesque sight of him, I saw myself in a full-length mirror. My light was gone. Just like the priest, I was adorned with the external robe of religious piety. There was nothing under the robe but a boy with the absence of light. Holding myself in disgust…

“I hate you!” and my self-loathing began. “God left me because this is who I really am.” I incorrectly blamed myself.

The darkness overwhelmed me, as an intense duality formed, swinging the pendulum of morality with an equal and opposite force.

I was utterly alone.

“The Shadow in me honors the Shadow in you”

“Have you ever been experienced? Well, I have…” Three ninth graders were singing along with Jimi Hendrix in a bedroom lit up with black-light posters. Long drawn out gurgling sounds emanated from a didgeridoo looking bamboo bong lined with cherry wax and filled with ice cubes to cool down the smoke. Sitting underneath a glowing Jimi Hendrix poster feeling the pot, pain and fear ripped through the pit of my stomach, throwing my back against the wall.

“Tommy!” blurted from my mouth. Jumping to my feet, I ran 6 miles from James Cayia’s house, through the New River Tunnel and paused, recalling my experience years ago. A vision of my younger brother Tommy in great pain quickened my pace.

Arriving at the hospital, Tommy was in ICU, unconscious with seven tubes coming out of him. Overhearing the doctor privately speak to my parents, he was not expected to live through the night. I cried.

Sneaking into Tommy’s room after everyone was asleep, tears began pouring from my eyes for Tommy. Believing he was going to die, I asked God to take my life in exchange of his. Immediately, a wind filled the room. Whether physically or ethereally, I really don’t know.

“He will be all right” rang through the room and filled me with peace and elation. Divine presence had returned.

Arriving at Broward General the next day, Tommy had been moved out of critical care during the night. I remember walking up the stairs then entering his new room to see him sitting up eating jello, smiling, with tubes and bandages attached to his body. Relief overwhelmed me. Slowly backing away from everyone, I looked out the window up at the clouds and said:

“You can take me now.” So I quietly waited to die.

In the 70’s, I began taking periodic hitchhiking trips across the US, over 30,000 miles total, in search of metaphysical and spiritual truths. Each journey was a conscious act of intention, starting with 45 minutes of Transcendental Meditation. I would set clear intentions, visualizing the ride I wanted, and the results were often uncanny.

Refining my abilities by setting more specific intentions about the type of person or woman and include an invitation to stay a day or few, my romantic encounters increased. Remember, this was the 70’s and I was a hippie, clean and well dressed, but still a hippie.

My desire for the spiritual shifted the nature of my intentions toward spiritual connections. The responsiveness of the universe astounded me with inspiring heartfelt encounters.

In 1977, during a hitchhiking trip to Seattle with a woman, I tested the power of intention by pushing it to the limit, imagining a specific couple driving a yellow and black Monte Carlo who would give us a ride and invite us to stay with them. To my amazement, the couple appeared exactly as I had envisioned, reinforcing the sense that I could either manipulate the physical realm through my intentions or pick up on an extreme possibility.

It was then I realized my potential for abusing this gift and stopped hitchhiking. My meditative intentions turned toward the manifestation of necessities of life such as work, living spaces, vehicles relationships and tough situations, which I continued to practice throughout my life.

“There’s a shadow in you.” said Herschal, igniting his hand-carved bone pipe and stroking his Gandalf like beard.

I met Herschal and Obruni somehow waiting for me in a diner outside Santa Fe on one of my cross-country hitchhiking adventures. Herschal, a seasoned mountain man, became my first spiritual mentor. He, alongside Obruni, a compassionate and beautiful woman, helped form a small community in La Cañyon. Their way of life centered around barter, shared meals, and deep spiritual connections, creating a familial atmosphere.

One day, Herschal and Obruni led me into deep meditation, asking me to reflect on what hurts inside. Guiding me into a moment of profound self-awareness, I realized the source of my pain was not my father’s withdrawal of verbal affection, but rather my own perception of the absence of unconditional love. This insight healed me, allowing me to reconnect with a deep love for my father and experience a flood of peace and freedom.

This was my introduction how the hidden recesses of my psyche can unknowingly govern my life and through self-discovery, they can evaporate.

A few weeks after my Divine encounter in Gainesville, the following happened:

It was my habit to get to the construction job a half-hour early so I could sit in my car and absorb the bible like a sponge. Reading in the book of Exodus, I came across 33:18:

• Moses Asked: “Now show me your glory.” (Similar translation: “Please, show me your splendor, your wonderful essence!”)
• The Reply: “I will make all my goodness to pass in front of you…”

At that moment the vision in my eyes went dark and my mind froze. The heartfelt yearning of Moses became mine as tears of longing welled up from my heart. Then these words silently landed in my psyche:

“If you ask, I will!”

Silence surrounded me. The one I love just invited me to see him.

Remembering how I entered the Divine Light at 11 years of age, I saw how this message was placed within my heart like a whisper back then.

But who am I, judging myself as unworthy, I was frightened to come face to face with the Divine white-light again. Who was I to even ask? Thinking of it every day, I could not bring myself to ask.  So for the next three years the echo of the invitation faded into a small distant possibility.

Six months after my marriage, we moved to Boulder and my desire for the Divine began to increase.

Every morning for two weeks, I went up the side of the mountain and began asking for Divine presence again. Meditating next to the famous dead tree overlooking Boulder as the sun rose, shining on my face, my heart began filling with hope.

Continuing to languish for the Divine, I drove to a park after sunset. While sitting in my car for two hours longing to see my Divine love again, a silent wind filled the car, blowing through my soul. Filling me in every way, the powerful love and peace of the Divine washed over me, returning me to the person thriving in the light.

Upon returning home my wife said my face was glowing and I replied “You mean I look happy?” “No, its actually glowing.” she said. There were no words to convey what I was experiencing, so I could not share.

The effects of this experience lasted for the next six months.

For three semesters, I took nothing but computer programming classes at the Community College of Denver in Broomfield, Colorado. My last semester marked the beginning of another two week quest for Divine presence along side my search for full time computer programming position.

After securing my first programming position immense gratitude propelled me to spend time communing with the Divine as if walking with a friend for the next two weeks.

Then it happened, almost two weeks to the day. Rushing into my being from what seemed to be through the top of my head, the energy of Divine love presence entered me like a swoosh. My inner self expanding beyond its own borders and into the presence of eternity and peace. My heart, mind and body were fulfilled, not just filled. Divine did not enter me, I expanded into Divine presence.

Filled with awe and only thoughts and emotions originating from Divine love, I took off running at full speed around the mall. Leaping and laughing, bursting with energy, I ran all the way around the mall like a gazelle, or crazy man as I imagined was the perspective of people driving by.

Waking around 5am every morning for the next few months filled with energy, the dance I experienced as a young boy returned. Filled with flowing energy, there was nothing else on earth I desired.

But then the shadow returned and the elated state of being slowly faded.

In August 1994, my 14-year marriage came to an end. A few months later, upon awakening, the overwhelming pain of loss of love caused me to stay at home for three days. Allowing myself to fully embrace the pain, all I could think and feel was “it just hurts.”

Upon the third day, I arose to find the pain was replaced with love. But an unconditional love, not requiring an object to love. I was reminded that emotional pain was the perceived absence of Divine love.

Embracing my pain, instead of avoiding it, allowed the energy of love into the pain, dissolving it. My transformation from suffering to deep spiritual growth gave reason to the pain. Without this, it simply would have remained just pain.

“How do I reach inside and cause transformation from the soul level?” my eyes reflecting the depth of my longing. With silent lips, her eyes spoke compassion toward my unfulfilled desire as the hope of an answer pulsed through me.

Then it began.  Filling my solar plexus and surging outward in a radial pattern, an energetic wave enveloped my entire body. Adrenaline overwhelmed my physical senses. Quickening my heartbeat, the blood resounded within my ears as my breath was taken away within a few short seconds.

Quickly opening, my mind revealing a thought from deep within my soul, presenting its revelation as the unveiling of hidden reality:

“I did not possess the power to affect a change at such a spiritual level, therefore, it was not my job. Awakening comes from Spirit.”

Because “I” did not hold the power, it was not “my” job. Therefore, I could simply stop attempting to change through human effort. Instead, my human effort should be redirected to seek Spirit presence. This transforms from the inside out instead of outside in.

One swift pulse of Spirit energy radically altered my perception, shifting the vantage point of “I” to outside myself and thus creating an ensuing metamorphosis that would ripple throughout the rest of my life. One little glimpse rerouted the trajectory of the rest of my life.

Suddenly, my thoughts were interrupted as another wave engulfed me like a strong wind within my spirit. My physical senses faded into the background and my focus was redirected to an image of a spirit orchestrating the manifestation of a situation between two people with the intent of drawing them together to assist spiritual growth.

They showed me a vision of the multitudes of humanity but from the perspective of the spiritual realm. There was no separation from one spirit to the next, all were as one, yet unique. Transparency between all was the norm, no hidden thoughts or agendas.

I saw how one spirit connected to another person’s spirit and the two spirits arranged a meeting of their human selves in order to satisfy each other’s growth needs. This was accomplished by creating what might be described as a magnetic, energetic attraction that manifested within the human mind and sometimes filtered into the body as romance. There were thousands of variations of the energy of attraction, but the majority of them contained the hope of fulfillment of a human desire. It was like a carrot to the humans that drew them toward a specific path.

It was inferred that many times as we embark on a journey of fulfilling a desire, we learn a valuable lesson as well. If we learn the lesson, then we are satisfied on a deeper level. If not, we repeat it.

The tunnel opened up completely as if I had passed through it to the other side. Without turning my head I could visually see all around me, front, sides and back all at the same time. I was also experiencing this dimension.

My attention was drawn to the east. The figures of twelve spiritual beings appeared. Suspended in midair, looking straight at me, they radiated Divine energy that transformed my state of mind into unconditional love. Inside I cried with relief because every human desire was fulfilled and every thought of separation from The Divine left me. I was whole and eternal. I had returned home.

At first, they were one energy system, hovering in place that slowly formed into twelve distinct beings, cloaked as if wearing robes. The robes were somehow for my benefit.

Positioned in the east, just behind and above Martha’s head, allowed me to see them and Martha’s face at the same time. They did not occupy physical space, the physical was superimposed on top of the spiritual.

“Who is it that is talking to you” she asked.

I hadn’t thought to ask, so I turned to look straight at him and a wave immediately passed through me.

“He is knowledge” I said as I turned back to her. “I think I’ll call him Knowles.”

I was swimming in an ocean of love. It was outside of me; it permeated me and originated from within me at the same time. It was eternal, with no end in sight, either in time or space. The translucent form of a human body appeared, suspended within a bright oval light, joined at the solar plexus. The light was the body’s creative life-force and the energy behind human existence.

The oval light was a perpetual, consciously aware eternal being. Millions of twinkling colorful light fibers were emanating from its center, extending out to form the shape of the oval. The white included all the colors of the rainbow as twinkling moments. This energy of life I translated as unconditional eternal love.

Like looking into a baby’s eyes, the human form, a denser light, was a blank canvas without gender, awaiting incarnation to fill in the individual traits of a person. Without realizing at the moment, I was being shown myself through the eyes of my soul.

Within an instant, I was transformed into the spiritual being shown to me and the burdens of life were lifted. All the mortal and physical aspects of my life no longer existed, only the purity of life and love. I felt extremely light and buoyant, moving about effortlessly and suspended in a space that connected me to the rest of the universe rather than bound to the earth by gravity.

Then I was taken on a journey through my mortal life and all the things that create stress for me. I saw my business life and the heaviness in comparison to how I was currently feeling. It felt thick and burdensome as I tried to control all the details associated to running a business. All this was within a split second but was communicated to me with such completeness.

Then I experienced something similar to a general life review and was able to see and experience the damage to my own life resulting from my not being connected with my spirit. There was no person or situation to blame. Even when something happened to me, the focus was on the damage done through my own negative response born out of not being integrated with my true eternal spirit.

Oh, how sweet the feeling of freedom from burdens.

But then I thought of death?

A surge elevated my spirit a new height of vibration, beyond my ability to be aware of Martha’s presence or my body. Finding myself standing on the edge of a chasm void of the energy that existed in the physical or spiritual realm, I could not see to the other side but knew something was there. Looking down over my left shoulder and seeing myself and Martha sitting on the couch, I desired to have the chord cut.

A force began pulling at my solar plexus towards the chasm, snapping the chord attached to my body. Passing through the threshold, I was completely set free from death and all the fears associated to it. Taken through the process of physical death, transformed me back to my true self, an eternal spirit, radiating like a star pulsating with light and love. Breathtaking, yet so natural. I had gone home.

Knowles was leading me and as if holding my hand, passing others, just like me, radiating love and light as they existed in eternal peace. Each one was unique, having their own identity without being separate from the others, we were all knit together in the same fabric of light. They were neither male or female but embodied the characteristics of both in harmonious oneness.

Looking up at Knowles, he verified the transparency between beings here. Then I noticed a distinction between Knowles and these other beings. Like me, they were of the human category of spirit but Knowles was a fundamentally different being. Knowles was twice my height and was leading me by the hand like the older brother of a little child.

After we passed all the others, I became aware of my physical body in the company of a good friend watching me. This awareness returned me to the couch as my physical sight came back into focus and I saw Martha looking straight at me, peacefully waiting for the wave to finish.

“I died.” I said with a smile.

The sound of vibrations became visceral. Recognizing my own being’s vibration, a force began to tune it upward, faster, higher, similar to the Lucasfilm THX sound effect from the movie theaters. My internal self was being elevated while my human self was fading out of sight. I was becoming pure energy.

The First Spiritual Realm

My soul’s sight expanded into the deep hum of cosmic vibration, the sound of blending the physical universe with the first spiritual realm. The sound of the life-force infusing itself into molecular structure, I became one with the pulsating atoms of our solar system. This was the closest realm to human vibration, and the realm from which Divine energy densifies into physical form.

The Second Spiritual Realm

This time, they vibrated me through the first realm, continuing upward into another distinct dimension far beyond the first. My conscious human awareness could not pass beyond the first realm into the second, it was left behind.

Upon being tuned back down, there she was, on the couch watching me. The only thing I was able to bring back from this dimension, was the deep wonderful feeling of being somewhere beyond everything else I’ve been shown.

The Third Spiritual Realm

Past and future dissolved into a singularity of the exact moment. My mind, ceasing to think, gave way to the experience of oneness. Individual existence vanished. I had become Divine love and my love for Martha turned Divine, as she vanished from my sight.

My body froze and disconnected. Traveling upward again, through the frequencies of the first two realms, my vibration shot through the roof as I entered into a third spiritual realm. Neither of the first two realms could grasp the third, therefore, my only recollection is a beautiful existence beyond the second realm. Different than forgetting, the first two dimensions were incapable of seeing the third dimension just like my eyes cannot see the full spectrum of light. I passed back into myself while the complete oneness dissolved as my reorientation into my body took awhile. We sat in silence.

“Hi.” was the only thing that could eventually emerge. I had become pure energy where human thought or language does not exist. Filled with love, I was genuinely happy to see her.

It’s a good thing I cannot see into the future, because if I could, I would have tried to avoid the final wave with every ounce of my strength.

Then it hit… Like a tidal wave. All night waves of elation came upon me, creating great joy and peace, but this wave hurt. Great fear ripped through the core of my being. Not fear of being harmed, but fear of being caught in a lie. Pulling back the curtain to my human-self, I became both the deceiver and the deceived.

“I am undone..! I am trapped within myself..! What will I do?” I was suspended in time without hope of escape.

I became spirit. Then something like a holographic fortress surrounded my human mind, shifting my consciousness from spirit to human by reflecting back to me my human oriented beliefs, thoughts, perceptions and limited physical senses in an array that resembled a stained-glass window. I absolutely believed what I thought to be true.

This mask, or veil (as I named it), is the shadow that filters out the higher vibrations of light emanating from The Divine through my soul. The purpose of this veil is to effectively cause the densification of the energy of Divine light to solidify into what I can only perceive as a solid physical realm, turning my reality of a spiritual entity into a physical entity. Incorrectly defining it as the real-world, I could no longer see beyond my human-self.

This was the first lie I told myself and the lie from which all others are formed. This created the first pain, the pain of loss of direct connection with Divine Love and the pain from which all other pains evolve.

But the human mask is designed to open and allow us to see beyond itself into Divine presence. As our genuine heart’s desire to see Divine presence rises up through the hierarchy of human desires to the pinnacle, the veil is temporarily removed. This knowledge is one of the things they left me with and the same message given me years before.

I looked at Knowles. He loved me. This was the moment he became my friend.

“When you understand all I have shown you, you will be who you truly are. This is your task, and when completed, each of the others, in their time will come to you. This is your preparation for what is to come.”

The dimension closed and they were no more.

Gazing over the calm ocean, I settled into the familiar calm state of diminished thought. Passing in front of me, a man caught my eye as I began seeing people and their psyche’s energetically.

A twinkling star, radiating out a few feet out from his body to form an oval, filled me with compassion. Sensing his life’s struggles, I felt the unhappiness of his existence in the pit of my stomach. He had closed himself off to the awareness of deep emotional pain. Seeing his spirit buried underneath, my heart wept, without a critical thought.
Experiencing the compassionate non-judgmental love of Knowles, each person’s lives were transparent, their struggles, the threads of human existence. I knew them… They were me!

At the core of their unhappiness was a recurring theme, “the perceived absence of Divine love.” Without knowing the presence of this love, they were lost, adrift in a sea of emptiness, paddling in circles with their human desires toward temporary fulfillment while avoiding touching the emotional pains of life. Their buried pains becoming layers of false perceptions further distancing themselves from their own spirit.

Two weeks of experiencing people’s pain was as much sorrow as I could handle. I was at the end of myself and asked for the ability to see people’s pain to be removed as I drifted off to sleep.

That night I had an intensely profound dream about the layers of emotional pain and false perceptions that exist between my conscious awareness and Divine mind. My eyes looked out into the world to see exactly what I normally see, a physical realm with solid objects.

A golden key was placed in my right hand as my arm stretched out. When the key was turned clockwise 45 degrees, an ember appeared, burning away the fabric of the physical as if a thin veneer. Crackling away a hole large enough to reveal another realm behind it, less energetically dense than the physical. There were shapes and forms but not the impression of solid mass.

My hand raised the key again through the physical hole into this new realm and turned in the same fashion. Another ember appears and began burning a hole in this dimension, crackling like before, unlocking yet another dimension behind it with properties even less dense energy.

One more time my hand raised the key but it did not turn. I had reached the end of my natural ability to open the next realm, not because there was something wrong with me, but because I had to evolve through my layers of emotional pains and false perceptions.

The next day, people’s spirits were no longer visible to me, nor was their pain.
Since the time of Knowles in 1994, my life has become about revealing the layers of my humanity in order to achieve their task. Becoming the observer of myself, I watched my own evolution from the confines of limited religious beliefs and practices into an experiential being walking this planet. It took some time and my mind did not let go so easily.

A few months after Knowles, a conversation revealed Martha wanting to marry and have a child. Recently divorced, I was not ready for either, so we chose to become friends, freeing her to find a man that would be in alignment with her. Our friendship continued and we saw each other on a regular basis. She is a wonderful woman and my love and fondness for her never went away.

Month’s later, the vision of a blonde face began to creep into my psyche followed by the impetus to seek her out. It was natural for me to bring this type of intention into my meditation in order to manifest (reveal) what the universe had in mind.

As soon as I finished saving the letter and turning off my computer, the phone rang. It was Phil, some random guy I met a few weeks earlier who wanted to hang out with me. He was calling me from Coco Pazzo’s on Commercial Blvd. In Ft. Lauderdale, a restaurant and bar with live music and a dance floor, inviting me to join him.

Food, music and dancing, but I’m not really in the mood so I told him I’m going to pass. We hung up and the urge to go arose, so I went. Walking across the parking lot, I could see the place was packed and the last thing I felt like was to be shoulder to shoulder with all those people.

About to turn around, my eyes landed on a blonde looking at me with an electrifying gaze. The only open seat was the stool next to her at the sidewalk bar. With her smile, she invited me to sit. She was beautiful and we were instantly enamored with each other.

A few weeks after meeting Alese, I was cooking when I went into the next room. Minutes later, the smoke alarm went off. Rushing back into the smoke filled kitchen, searing pain ripped through my abdomen, dropping me to the floor, doubled over.

Hearing the sound of burning food, I forced myself up to move the pan off the heat. The smoke smelled like wood instead of food and the alarm was sounding but I could not get up.

A dimension opened. The stark face of Claire, my dark hair, dark eyed wife screaming at the window was being consumed by fire. I curled up in a ball, crying for 10 minutes.

Hours later, I came across my sketch book from years ago next to Ashtyn’s bed. There she was, the woman in my vision was the same woman I sketched with charcoal hundreds of time since childhood.

Next month, Alese invited me to a past-life regression session. Being well outside my wheelhouse of belief systems, I reluctantly joined her with expectations of hearing a bunch of emotionally driven and possibly delusional people puff themselves up. With a closed mind, I sat in a circle of seven people, ready to keep quiet in respect for Alese.

The session started with a short meditation. The host asked if anyone had something to say. My head filled with light as my consciousness faded into the background as if looking over my shoulder. Another consciousness, but still myself, came forward to replace it. With my eyelids closed, I saw everyone as energy in human form.

Standing up, I said “I have something to say.” Eyelids remaining closed, I moved from person to person, kneeling on their left side, toughing just above their knee. When touching them, their emotional pain came into view within my soul and I spoke to each one in a way that helped them with their pain… Until I reached very the last person.

The stocky man with a beard leaned backward and as I touched his leg, a dimension opened while gripping me with the same pain from the kitchen. Then the vision began.

Loosing complete sight of the room, the whirring bullets flew past my head followed by a distant crack. Crouching behind a large fallen tree at the edge of a bright green meadow loading my gun, I hear the splat of a soldier’s chest being hit by a bullet. The next thing I saw was the red, saturating his gray uniform with both our rifles laying on the ground. Scooping him up in my arms, his body tensed as he mustered his final words, “Take care of Claire.”

Watching the life leave his eyes, I said “I will, my friend.”

Surviving the war and keeping my promise, I looked after Claire. In time, we fell deeply in love. A love so completely fulfilling, I desired nothing else.

Years later, walking down the path to our home, smoke began billowing at a distance and I began running. A blazing fire was consuming the house when her face appeared in the window emanating sheer terror and pain. Her hands pushing on the glass, she looked at me as she fell.

The house burnt down to smoldering charcoal. The image of her face indelibly imprinted on my mind with the fierce pain of loss of love. I failed at keeping her safe and in fulfilling my promise to a dying man. I carried this energy even into my own death.

The vision ended. Looking up the man was crying. Memories of a Civil War battle overwhelmed him. Unusually enthralled by the Civil War his entire life, he created a model-size reenactment of a Civil War battle scene in his basement.

Then I shared with him my vision. He took a deep breath, leaned back into his chair and wiped his eyes.

“I’m done… It’s over.” Describing how he turned his entire basement into a Civil War scene and how obsessed he was with it, he now felt he could let it go, he felt healed somehow. I could see the energy within him was neutralized. He was at peace. And so with me also.

1999 rolled around and I hadn’t had a drink for over eight years simply because I didn’t want to alter my state of mind artificially. During these years, I would go out with friends to bars and restaurants and even though they drank, I would always order cappuccino or a tonic and lime.

One night I went into a French restaurant on Las Olas boulevard and sat at the bar, waiting for a friend. I was about to order a cappuccino when the word Merlot came out of my mouth. During my days as a gourmet waiter, expensive red wine always created a mystique, but I didn’t give it much thought and drank the wine slowly and enjoyed my friends.

Next thing I knew, my drinking escalating over the next six months led me to my first AA meeting. Toward the very end of the meeting, I broke down and cried, hiding my face and tears as best a possible. Their stories were the same as mine, but that’s not why I broke down. It was because there was already an entire book written about my inability to stop drinking. In this room, I was no longer unique, drinking had reduced me to a low common denominator and it made me sad.

The next three months were a real struggle.  I had a difficult time believing my Divine presence encounters would ever be restored, but the yearning in my heart just kept asking as I recited the first three steps every morning.

Then in one day, I felt the slight presence again and gave myself over to it. It’s been since the year 2000 without the desire to drink. I’ve been placed in a position of neutrality, just like reported in the Big Book.

Seeking Divine presence again while living in Delray Beach, FL, I would spend hours every day asking to be filled with him. For three and a half months, my heart struggled between focusing on life’s many facets and seeking Divine presence as the highest of life’s desires. I began checking out the house-church concept and found one south of Lauderdale where I enjoyed the people.

After two weeks of sustaining this heart-felt desire, the minister of the house-church invited me to join him with four other ministers as they discussed various aspects of their groups. Not sure why I was invited to join them, but there it was, the unknown event.

After 30 minutes, my body grew rigid and my hands clasped the arms of my chair. No longer in control of my body, my mouth spoke… “I have something to say!”

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Do not seek great things for yourself. If you seek to be filled with the spirit, are you not still seeking for yourself? Seek my face.”

My body began shaking profusely, my muscles tightened as I gripped the chair. A tunnel to another dimension opened in front of my eyes and quickly surrounded me as if passing through it.

There it was, Divine presence slightly to the right of my line of sight in the very same way he appeared to me when I was eleven. Divine love filled me completely with such gentle power, unraveling my humanity in front of the Divine and I spoke out loud, “I am undone.”

My life reeled before me in an instant, not like reviewing details but rather the very nature of being human with a limited consciousness. When I saw my own humanity compared to this eternal loving being, I unraveled like a bowl of spaghetti, causing me to gasp in long-winded cries, rocking back and forth crying.

The vision of a long metal javelin being thrust into the earth with tremendous force caused a silent roaring thunder to vibrate through the cosmos as it anchored itself, perfectly plumb, directly before my eyes and close enough to touch.

Pulling my hands forward, I was guided to grasp the javelin and felt the ridges that ran from top to bottom. It was about a foot in diameter, so my fingers could not wrap around it. My eyes were fixed straight ahead, looking directly at the javelin between my hands when from Divine presence just to the right, the words were spoken…

“Do not look to the left or the right, look straight ahead. Seek my face.”

There was a “swoosh” as the wind of Divine Love went right through me. All the guilt and bad feelings about my humanity were immediately taken away with one fell swoop.

The words were spoken from the form of God like a calm river of love, “Who will go for me?” followed by a vision of Isaiah’s experience with God written in Isaiah 6:1-8. With all abandon I repeated the same words as if I was remembering, repeating them again, “Here am I, Send me.”

A hypnosis session with Mandy Bass, a certified NLP coach. Standing at the edge of a dark abyss, death appeared, transforming me into a Samurai warrior from 1648. Leading soldiers towards the slaughter of villages, hating myself for all I’ve done in obedience to the Emperor, I died.

Leaving my altered state, unrecognizable symbols transforming into English letters spelled out “Komoto… Komoto… Komoto…” Repeating each one differently until it resonated with a Japanese accent.

The dark figure of Komoto helplessly desiring forgiveness invoked my unconditional as he transformed into speckles of light to form a faint oval array of white light. Then he dissolved into love.

Opening my eyes, no longer the Samurai, I returned to the couch. Still my higher-self personality, my earlier lower-self version who carried the name of Bob, appeared to my right as a shadow coming closer. Penetrating me, I was freed and never felt the deep need for forgiveness again.

My six week focused seeking Divine presence while meditating at the Rio Grande Gorge led me the edge of giving up when I cried out “Where are you!”

“I AM HERE!” viscerally rang through me as deep vibrations. Everything turned an energized deep purple, as it usually did, not blotting out the physical, but a translucent overlay of another dimension.

The physical became a translucent, vibrant holographic structure made of living energy, infusing the entire earth. Transcending the staunch dense reality, the earth morphed into a projection of light, like a 3D holographic projector casting a live image onto physical molecules.

Large Fibonacci-shaped lines of energy, interwoven like fabric, emerged as a grid system defining the dimensions of height, width, and depth extending infinitely into the cosmos. Each intersection formed a discernible intersecting point of power.

Then I could see the entire town of Taos from all directions at once. Then I heard… “With one Divine thought, all the minds of Taos could be made to see. This transforms mankind.”

“What blocks me from experiencing this all the time?” My longing was not for the visions or experience, but to simply be able to remain within Divine presence, my true love. I received an answer, immediately and was shown the three energy systems to be removed.

My entire life condensed into one second. Then clarity ensued. “There was nothing to fix. I wasn’t broken. I was just being uncovered.”

After being told at the Gorge to move to Pasadena, CA, a woman from an online dating site contacted me. Upon showing her picture to Chris, he immediately recognized her as my painting from 14 years ago (see painting in book).

In a vision, Lilly appeared as the embodiment of Claire from a past life. Sparking a profound inner conflict with my human desire to relive our love, I began wondering how to reconcile past desires with the present. But I was hesitant to share my past life experiences with her over the phone, so I waited to see her face-to-face.

Inviting me to dinner, I waited as my meditations began revealing we would not be allowed to be together as man and woman in this lifetime.

After a few days of emotional upset, the energy system of looking for her (a woman to complete me) was neutralized. This was the second insight given me at the Gorge that will be removed.

One morning, meditating in a park in Ojai, CA, the spiritual dimension opened again. Everything went dark as my head and eyes turned downward to the left.

A vision appeared. The earth, as seen from the moon, was filled with billions of people twinkling as dim golden specs of light, some more than others. But then one became bright, like a lighthouse shining a beam directly toward the face of God. Turning my head watching the beam head toward the presence of the Divine up and to my right, my vision reached around 60 degrees and was stopped.

Then the energy of Divine responded, shining light of Divine presence into their soul. When a person genuinely seeks to see, know, be with… the Divine responds. Otherwise, the sanctity of our existence as a sovereign being, is respected and loved.

At dinner, Debra wanted to gift me with a birthday present of a session with Laurence Hillman, a well known archetypal coach who uses astrological charting as a basis. Having already developed bias against it prior to investigation, I sat silent for a moment, feeling it was a waste.

An energy moved me to lean to my right, about a 45 degree angle off my chair. My head passed through an energetic separation between the physical and spiritual (non-physical) realm.

Resembling the inner workings of a sophisticated watch, turning energy lines connected the planets in our solar system as they revolved around the sun. Each element had a cyclical and revolving alignment around the earth as it’s center axis, as opposed to the axis being the sun.

There were human souls suspended at different points around the earth, waiting for specific alignment. Tick-Tock, the system moved like a clock. Then one of the souls, with a swoosh, ported out of the spiritual toward the earth, manifesting into the physical. Then another.

Every point of alignment carried a specific quality, characteristic or a type of influence to be embedded within the human consciousness or psyche. These qualities influence the individual trajectory through life without the human’s knowledge or understanding.

“Yes, I think I would like a reading by Laurence.”

Debra embodies a gentle strength, her presence radiating warmth. As an organic chef, her culinary creations transcend mere sustenance, but are expressions of her deep, connection to nature. Her hands, readjusts physical ailments through her expert training while opening her client’s minds toward deeper emotional healing. Her golden retrievers reflect her kind loving nature. Her spiritual awareness, woven throughout her life with great interest and reverence. Yet, beneath her serene exterior, Debra harbored a quiet yearning, a puzzle piece missing in the mosaic of her soulful life.

That night, something shifted. Debra’s voice, usually so full of certainty and peace, wavered as she confessed, “I listen to you, and although I so want to, I can’t fathom your experiences. I’ve never felt anything like that. I have no point of reference. It’s like trying to imagine standing on the moon.”

Our eyes met, a mirror of transforming vulnerabilities, signaling the silent crescendo of our connection. “What is it that you seek from the Divine?” The words a whisper, treading lightly so as not to break the tender moment.

“A Response!” she pleaded into the stillness, her voice a blend of hope and desperation.

It was the rawest, most heartfelt plea I had ever witnessed, and it moved me profoundly. After a moment, her tear-streaked face lifted slightly, eyes searching, asking, “What do I do?”

“Ask with all your heart, relentlessly, until it happens.”

Two weeks later, In the midst of her mundane grocery shopping, the Divine chose to respond. Right there, between the aisles of earthly sustenance, a sacred, luminous moment unfolded, and the boundary between the tangible and the ethereal dissolved into Divine presence.

Since the 80’s, I’ve wanted to do my version of 40 days in the wilderness for the purpose of being alone with Divine presence, without distraction and now the opportunity presented itself. Losing my primary client after a 10 year relationship the day after my final decision, my income dropped $12,000/mth. Coincidence???

Buying an off-grid property with my son, I found myself months later with very little income and could not change it. In what I call my night in the little red tent, weeks of visions culminated into the stark reality of the duality of my existence – Spirit + human. That night I chose to give up everything.

Upon awakening the next morning, the duality of consciousness was gone. My mind had merged with my Divine Love more closely so as to appear to me as a singularity of consciousness. Rebirthed, my thought patterns changed, living in each moment, filled with an inexplicable love that did not possess conditions for its expression towards others.

My financial issues began clearing up the very next day.