Major Test of Faith #1: Leaving Teaching and Going to Healing School June 1990 – May 1991
It was my 30th birthday (April 1990), and my girlfriend at the time threw me a surprise birthday party (really, it was a dinner with about 8 close friends). That day, I had appeared with my students on television, performing an innovative Earth Day skit. These were students that were part of a visionary senior elective course I had created to sensitize students to the impact of science and technology on humanity. I had won a Creative Teachers Award for a project I had done with this class the previous year, and now we were on live TV. I was personally interviewed before my students performed, and all 8 friends at my party had seen the broadcast. It was a triumphant moment for me, the culmination of many years of extremely hard work, often going against the grain of traditional academia.
I felt like a survivor, and was now receiving public acknowledgement for all my hard work and educational innovation.
I had 5 years under my belt of successful teaching, I had completed my undergraduate and masters degree, had been an innovator in many ways as a teacher, and was in a solid relationship with a good woman.
It seemed to most outsiders that I was moving very smoothly towards a great career and a great life.
I had already signed my contract to teach for the following school year, so I was completely set for my immediate future.
Ah, but alas, the Universe had other plans for me !
Underneath all of this apparent smooth-life progression, lay my still-baffled mind, that was blown away at the Easter Aquhorthies stone circle in Scotland 3 years earlier.
I had tried very hard over the past 3 years to put this experience out of my mind and follow a ‘normal’ career and relationship path.
But Memorial Day 1990 was another major turning point in my spiritual journey.
On this day, my girlfriend and I went to visit a “Sufi Center” called “The Abode of the Message” in New Lebanon, NY. “Sufism” is a mystical branch of Islam. My girlfriend’s brother was a teacher in the Sufi Tradition, and often gave workshops at “The Abode”.
I had no inkling that waiting for me at “The Abode” was my next major spiritual wake-up call.
I personally didn’t have much interest in the Sufi tradition, but having just completed my 5+ years of my “Metaphysical Learning Explosion”, I was basically open to trying anything that had some connection to spirituality.
So with an open mind, I readily accepted an invitation to participate in the Sufi spiritual practice of “Whirling Dervish Dancing”.
Spinning around and around in a dance seemed innocent enough. So I thought !
Halfway through the spinning ritual, I started to float out of my body, and went into a altered state of consciousness probably equivalent to a hallucinogenic drug experience, except without any drugs.
Still I was conscious and aware of myself and my surroundings, and amazingly able to navigate my life, while simultaneously floating in this hallucinogenic state.
And this altered state of consciousness lasted over a week !
Somehow, I just “knew” I was having another spiritual wake-up call like my Scottish stone circle experience 3 years earlier.
I felt deep down inside me, that I was having some sort of ‘Shamanic Initiation’ and that I was being selected to begin some massive Spiritual/ Shamanic training from “The Universe”.
Crazy as it may seem, I just ‘knew’ I had to leave teaching and “Follow the Universe” from this point on.
Fortunately, my school allowed me to back out of the teaching contract that I had already signed for the following year.
And just like that, I was free to “Follow the Universe”.
With very little savings, I decided to spend what little I had, and apply to the 1st year of a 4-year Energy Healing School on Long Island, which I started in September of 1990.
Way too many incredible spiritual openings happened to me during this 1st year of Energy Healing School to describe here. In fact, amazing spiritual experiences happened to me so often during this year that, after a while, I just stopped being amazed by them. They all began to seem “normal” to me from this point onward.
I was surrounded by about 200 other freshman energy healing students, and there were hundreds more upper-classmen and graduates of the school, all of whom were presumably having their own ‘trainings by the Universe’. So were my experiences somehow special and unique, I was asking myself ?
I will convey one incident to you that might give you some sense of how things evolved for me during this 1st year.
Fairly late in the 1st year, the main teacher was demonstrating a new healing technique up in front of the room while we 200 students were partnered-up to practice the technique.
Now, to fully understand this event, you should realize that the main teacher was psychic, saw auras, heard guidance from the spiritual world, and ‘channeled’ a spirit being who gave lectures on a regular basis.
So it was the same with the many upper-class assistants who were spread out among us 200 freshman: many of these assistants were also psychic, saw auras, heard guidance from the spiritual world, and ‘channeled’ spirit beings.
So during this particular demonstration from the teacher, one of the upper-class assistants who I had virtually no previous interactions with, walked over to me and quietly whispered in my ear:
“YOU don’t do this healing technique the way the teacher is teaching it ! The spirit world is telling me to give you this image that YOU use to do this type of healing. This is how you did this kind of healing in past lifetimes”.
Wow, what a mind blower !
Here I was, just a freshman among 200 other freshman, and hundreds of other upper-classmen and graduates, hearing from an upper-classman that the spiritual world specifically ‘told’ her to walk over to me and tell me that I use a different image to do this type of healing, and that this was how I did this healing in past lifetimes.
Again, WHAT A MIND BLOWER !
I used the imagery that she ‘channeled’ for me, and the healing worked perfectly.
Then the upper-class assistant walked away and I was never to have another interaction with her again.
But my life was changed forever after that intervention and communication from the spiritual world that was ‘channeled’ JUST FOR ME !
I just ‘knew’ that from that moment on I was going to be trained directly by the spiritual world and that I wouldn’t be needing any more teachers, schools, or books for my training.
I somehow understood that the Universe had brought me to this school so that I could learn the basics of energy healing, and that at a certain point towards the end of the 1st year, I was to say goodbye to this teacher and this school, and walk alone from this point on.
But if I thought that I was some special, fully-developed energy healer, who was now ready to step out into the world and do miraculous healings on people, boy was I mistaken !
I would soon discover that I was just a toddler as an energy healer IN THIS LIFETIME….and that it would take many difficult ‘Trials By Fire” from that time through 1994, as well as many more years of intense inner meditation and transformation work, for the Universe to give me the ‘green light’ to do more extensive healing work for people on this planet.
Needless to say, I didn’t complete my 1st year of Energy Healing School.
Like the school’s teacher and her upper class assistants, I was now very psychic, I was seeing auras (partially), I was receiving guidance from the spiritual world, and I was ‘channeling’ spirit beings.
7 months earlier, I had NONE of these abilities.
So here I was 7 months later, a “walking-talking-psychic-channeling-oddity” that no one in my family nor my friends recognized anymore !
The spiritual “Trials By Fire” that the Universe had in store for me over the next several years were many.
Some of these “Trials By Fire” required extraordinary faith, courage and surrender to ‘Pass the Test’.
What follows are some of the ‘Trials By Fire’ that the Universe put me through that required the most faith, courage and surrender.