Major Test of Faith #9: “Eat This!

Keepin’ It Texas Weird On My Long Strange Trip going South-West,

Tasting Sacred Tantric Wavy Mushroom Guru Gravy And Rave-ing Psychedelic Goddess Chili Peppers”

 

 

Note:  Yes I know the title of this chapter is a mouthful!!!  The title reflects the fact that this chapter of my story has many twists and turns in it, with various episodes spanning almost 2 years.

I’ve included quite a few YouTube video clips in this story. I would encourage you to take your time working your way through this story, and try to watch all the videos all the way through.

 

 Once and a while you might feel that some of the video clips are dragging on, and that you feel that you’ve gotten the point already. You may have.

 

This said, I’ve included the minutes of each video clip so you can choose a time to watch them where you won’t feel pressed for time, and thus make a hasty decision to either skip the video and/or not watch it all the way through. 

 

I’ve taken a lot of time searching for the right video clips to enhance the development of this story, and I feel that you will definitely miss a lot if you choose to skip over the video clips.

 

As well, I believe that you will most likely miss something important and special for the development of your consciousness if you choose to not watch the video clips all the way through.

 

I don’t have any particular spiritual bond with Neem Karoli Baba, the Taos Ashram, or the Hindu monkey god Hanuman, who is the Hindu deity that Neem Karoli Baba most honored.

 

Ram Das however, is an important part of this story. So I’m going to give you the opportunity to delve deeper into Ram Dass’ guru, Neem Karoli Baba, his primary Hindu deity Hanuman, and the Taos, New Mexico Ashram, IF YOU FEEL SO INSPIRED.

 

If you don’t feel inspired to delve deeper into Ram Dass’ guru right now, then simply skip the following ‘OPTIONAL’ section.

 

 

If you’d like to become familiar with Neem Karoli Baba, the Hindu monkey god Hanuman, and the Taos, New Mexico Ashram, I’ve included a number of YouTube video clips for you to watch.

Here’s a YouTube clip of what it is like at the Neem Karoli Baba Taos, New Mexico Ashram.  Click HERE to watch the video clip (2:24 minutes).

 

Here’s a YouTube video of archival footage of Neem Karoli Baba posted by Ram Dass (20:03 minutes) . Click Here. 

 

Next:  I won’t pretend to know much about any of the Hindu deities, including Hanuman, nor am I drawn to, nor am I guided by the Universe, to learn more about them. This said, I think it would again be respectful, and once again, perhaps even inspirational, to try to get a deeper feeling for Hanuman, and for the glorious role he plays in the Hindu pantheon.

Click HERE to watch a very cool, almost psychedelic, animated YouTube video clip about Hanuman (5 minutes)

 

Click here for a YouTube video of the Hanuman Chalisa – the sacred Hindu devotional song to Hanuman (with some cool animation) (9:48 minutes)
The singing is in Hindi. I personally find this language beautiful. Perhaps you will (or already do) find it enjoyable to listen to. I, of course don’t know what the words mean!  This next video has an English translation. There is also come cool, almost psychedelic animation in this clip.

 

Click here for another YouTube video of the Hanuman Chalisa – (with English Translation) (9:42 minutes) 

 

Anyway, back to the unfoldment of our story….

 

I had not read Ram Dass’ 1971 book “Be Here Now” before I came to this Ashram, and I have still not read it, nor has the Universe asked me to read it. Nonetheless, from everyone I’ve spoken to who’s read it, it is a very powerful spiritual book.

 

Here’s an image by the great visionary artist Alex Grey whose art I will be returning to again later in this story. This painting captures the different phases of Ram Dass’ life;

-from his pre-Ram Dass days as Richard Alpert, being an early LSD researcher (along with Timothy Leary) at Harvard from 1953 to 1963 (both Alpert and Leary were fired from Harvard in 1963)- we will be returning to this early LSD research later in this story

-to his traveling to India where he met Neem Karoli Baba and the Hindu God Hanuman

– to his later days as a world renown spiritual teacher

Ram Dass – Paper Print

Alex Grey painting  

 

Continuing…

 

I did attend one Ram Dass lecture during my ‘Metaphysical Learning Explosion’ days, so I did have some familiarity with him.

 

It would be a number of years from that summer of 1992 (I think it was 1998, but I’m not positive), as I was enjoying attending a New Age Expo in New York City, when I overheard someone whisper that this physically contorted gentleman in a wheelchair was Ram Dass and that he had recently had a stroke in February 1997.

 

Not being the type of person who pursues celebrities, I normally would not go up to a famous person and talk to them.

 

But this day was different.

 

I heard the Universe whisper in my ear to walk up to Ram Dass, tell him that I was a healer, and ask him if I could do a healing on him. With this youngish long-haired guy wheeling him around and a steady cascade of friends and admirers coming up to him, still and all Ram Dass looked me deeply in the eyes and said “YES”.

 

So with the assistance of the youngish long-haired guy, we stole away to some secluded spot and I did the healing. In the limited time I had (about 10 minutes) I was able to completely straighten out the contortions in his physical body.

 

He looked perfectly normal sitting there in his wheelchair, physically balanced and very relaxed.

 

Both Ram Dass and his assistant clearly recognized and greatly appreciated the healing results I had achieved in an extremely short time.

 

Unfortunately, his entourage found him and whisked him away from me before we could solidify plans to continue our healing work.

 

We did have a unique brief discussion as well, which I may write about elsewhere. But for now, let’s stay focused on this story.

 

Anyway, to reiterate, I had no particular understanding of the significance of the Universe bringing me to the Neem Karoli Baba Taos Ashram just before I was to begin a major, year-long stay in Austin, Texas.

 

And until a month ago when someone gave me tickets to Wavy Gravy’s 75th birthday benefit concert for the Seva Foundation, I did not realize that BOTH Ram Dass AND Wavy Gravy were co-founders of the Seva Foundation (along with Larry and Girija Brilliant).

 

I would not naturally have grouped Wavy Gravy and Ram Dass together as being natural partners to co-found a charitable Foundation to do good deeds around the planet.

 

Wavy Gravy is mostly known as a 1960’s hippy icon: the famous Master of Ceremonies at Woodstock, and the honorary Clown for the Grateful Dead.

 

Ram Dass I would naturally group with meditative, New Age spirituality, with a focus on Hinduism and Eastern mysticism in general.

 

Please listen to this Audio that I extracted from the Wavy Gravy movie ‘Saint Misbehavin’ (see below)
You can just go ahead and watch the whole movie (if you haven’t already), which I strongly recommend, but what I’ve extracted here from the movie IS THE BEAUTIFUL STORY OF HOW, following the success of Wavy Gravy’s Hog Farm Free Kitchen at Woodstock, Wavy and his wife Jahanara, as well as radical doctor Larry Brilliant, M.D. and his wife Girija, made a pilgrimage through out Western and Eastern Europe, on to Asia.
Finally landing in Nepal Larry Brilliant began treating the locals medically, while Wavy entertained the people.
This touching and spiritual journey eventually became the seedling that would become the Seva Foundation 10 years later.
Brilliant brought Wavy and Ram Dass to his home in Michigan and the Seva Foundation was born. Hear how the Grateful Dead became the first Seva fund raisers! Speakers in this clip include Larry Brilliant, Wavy Gravy, Jahanara Romney, Ram Dass, Bonnie Raitt, and others.

Click HERE to listen to this BEAUTIFUL AUDIO! (13:47 minutes)

 

 

Click HERE to watch a Video taken from YouTube about the founding of the Seva Foundation.  Featuring the founders Larry Brilliant M.D., Ram Dass, Wavy Gravy  and Girija Brilliant (5:03 minutes).   

 

 

The Importance of  ‘The Beatles’  in bringing Eastern Spirituality to the West

 

I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect on the importance of The Beatles visit to India in 1968 in the popularization of Hinduism and other Eastern spiritual practices and traditions in the West.

 

Click HERE to watch the movie trailer for ‘BeatlesAndIndia’.  https://beatlesandindia.com/  by Silver Screen Records (www.silvascreen.com)
YouTube @silvascreenrecords
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beatlesandi…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beatlesandindia
Twitter: https://twitter.com/beatlesandindia

 

 

Here’s a great YouTube video posted on ‘George Harrison TV, about the Beatles in India in 1968. (51.21 minutes)   There is no sound to this video, just the raw footage of the Beatles India trip. It’s long, but if you’re a Beatles fan, it might be worth your time to take in this East-West spiritual explosion in 1968.

 

Back to our story….

 

Now I should state right here that I personally do not take drugs of any kind, or drink alcohol.

 

When I was in my mid teens (roughly 1974 through 1976) I went through a short-lived though very intense phase where I took a few different types of drugs such as Acid, THC, Quaaludes, Hash and Marijuana.  I also occasionally drank more than modest amounts of alcohol at this time as well. Mostly beer, but also a variety of other stronger alcohol-content drinks, like Southern Comfort and Jack Daniels.

 

Something came over me in my late teens though, and while many of my friends were just getting started with drugs and alcohol, I went cold turkey and never started again. I may have had an occasional beer through my 20’s at social occasions, but nothing stronger.

 

When my major inner spiritual transformation work began around 1991, I was told specifically by the Universe to not take drugs or drink alcohol of any kind.

 

This ‘edict’ by the Universe, was mostly so I would keep my body and aura pure for the spiritual work I would be undertaking.

 

The Universe also wanted me to always be completely sober during this massive spiritual transformation work, so that I would always be able to take 100% responsibility for all of my actions.

I’m also thinking of the 1982 Adam Ant song ‘Goody Two Shoes’, where he chastises people with the lyric “Don’t Drink, Don’t Smoke, What Do You Do?”

 

The truth is that my normal waking consciousness is hallucinogenic!

 

My consciousness though is “grounded”,  where I ‘appear’ to outside observers as totally sober, and am completely capable of interacting with most anybody in a ‘together’ and down-to-earth way.

 

BUT ON THE INNER PLANES….IT’S 24-7 PSYCHEDELLIC AND HALLUCINOGENIC…with NO drugs or alcohol!

 

So I’ve been completely drug and alcohol free since roughly 1976, except for one psychedelic experience during my stay in Austin in 1992, an experience that was guided by the Universe.

 

A part of this story that I’m writing about here includes this one psychedelic experience I had in Austin, along with a Universe-guided tour of the drug-infused RAVE scene in Austin, not too long after I left the Neem Karoli Baba Ashram.

 

But I’m getting ahead of myself here…..Let’s get back to the gradual unfolding of this story….

 

Ram Dass before he was Ram Dass

 

For those of you that don’t know anything about Ram Dass, before Ram Dass changed his name in 1967, he was Richard Alpert, PhD, Harvard University professor, who, along with Timothy Leary, experimented with, and advocated for the use of hallucinogenic drugs (LSD, in his case) to achieve spiritual enlightenment.

 

Here’s an interesting YouTube video clip that shows Dr. Richard Alpert’s evolution to becoming Ram Dass, including
his early work at Harvard on LSD experiments with Timothy Leary. Click HERE to watch the clip (3:13 minutes)

 

FINALLY

 

I’ve finally gotten to the main point of taking you through all of this pre-Austin, Ram Dass / Neem Karoli Baba footage.

 

To get this ‘Final ‘Point’, please watch this final video taken from YouTube, and I’ll emphasize this main point after the video. (Note: Ram Dass refers to Neem Karoli Baba as simply Maharajji, which is the generic title of respect for a guru).

Click HERE to watch this ‘Final Point’ video clip (14:07 minutes).

So Neem Karoli Baba ate all of the LSD pills and he showed no reaction at all !!

 

And he said to Ram Dass:

”  IT’S  IN  YOU  “

 

So, this is why I believe the Universe took me to the Taos Ashram before bringing me to Austin, Texas for a wild, year-long stay, and then to California: The Universe was basically giving me a strong reminder that what it was about to show me was all ‘external methods’ to achieve what I would eventually achieve solely through my own inner meditation and transformation process.

 

But not everybody can meditate and achieve the kind of extra-sensory perception that I have opened up within myself.

 

So the Universe apparently wanted to give me a ‘tour’ of a variety of techniques it had developed to awaken the ‘higher minds’ of human beings, along with showing me all the pitfalls of what happens when human beings use these ‘external methods’.

 

So…Onward To Austin…Then to California

 

As I wrote in my last story  (Major Test of Faith #8 : Psychically reading the towering 6’4″, gun-slinging, mentally-unbalanced, cowboy-owner of an Austin, Texas Reggae Club), I felt that the Universe had completely hooked me up in Austin even before I got there, by getting me a free place to stay (Mr. D’s place) and by hooking me up with the hippy vendors who helped me find places to do psychic readings in Austin, like the Reggae club.

 

Another major connection that the hippy vendors hooked me up with within a month of me arriving in Austin, was to ask the organizers of the emerging RAVE scene in Austin, if I could do psychic readings at the RAVES.

 

Now I had no idea what a RAVE was before the vendors hooked me up.

 

I have no idea how unique the Austin RAVE’s were back in 1992 compared to the Raves happening throughout the world. I just know about the Austin RAVE scene in and around 1992.

 

And it was a very cool scene !

 

Unfortunately I couldn’t find any YouTube footage of Austin, Texas Raves in the 1990’s.  I wanted to show a video clip which captured the awesome artwork and warehouse set designs that went into the Austin RAVES while I was there.

The best YouTube videos I found are a 4-part series called “1990’s Techno Rave Culture”. It’s a pretty in-depth documentary of what this Rave scene was like in the 90’s.

 

1990’s Techno Rave Culture [1/4] Click HERE to watch (14:59 minutes)

1990’s Techno Rave Culture [2/4] Click HERE to watch (14:59 minutes)

1990’s Techno Rave Culture [3/4] Click HERE to watch (14:59 minutes)

1990’s Techno Rave Culture [4/4] Click HERE to watch (11:44 minutes)

 

Now in truth, I really wasn’t part of this scene. I was a psychic reader and emerging healer who just a short time ago was a relatively straight-laced, 30 year old high school Physics teacher, who didn’t take any drugs or drink alcohol. The Universe brought me into this Austin RAVE scene to ‘check it out’, not to become a part of it.

 

One of the miraculous mind-blowing events that showed me that the Universe was making a concerted effort to illuminate my mind to this Austin RAVE scene, came one sunny day when I was doing psychic readings near Littlefield Fountain on the University of Texas main campus.

 

All of a sudden, out of the  BLUE, appeared Alvin,  who you might recall from one of my earlier stories, was the interesting guy who I first saw in May of 1992 running around COMPLETELY NAKED on the Great Lawn in Central Park, NYC during a regional Rainbow Gathering picnic, with his whole body painted BLUE like the Hindu God Krishna or Rama, and flapping two huge, psychedelically-painted wings that were somehow attached to his arms.

 

You might recall that it was from Alvin that I first heard that the 1992 Rainbow Gathering would be held somewhere near Durango, Colorado, and it was Alvin’s ‘costume’ that the Universe used to inspire me to come to the Colorado Rainbow Gathering in my own “Healer-Minister-Clown-Psychedelic-Shaggy Dog-Cousin It” costume, that I never got to wear due to the terrorizing antics of my ‘sucker punch buddies’.

 

Now, I had already met quite a number of interesting and colorful people in Austin so far, like my hippy vendor friends and assorted people I’d met at the Reggae club and elsewhere.

 

But not much prepared me for the vision of Alvin appearing out of  the  BLUE, with his body painted completely BLUE like the Hindu god Krishna or Rama, and if my memory is serving me right, he was also flapping those two huge, psychedelically-painted wings just as he did on the Great Lawn in Central Park about 6 months earlier. The only difference this time, was that he wasn’t completely naked but had on blue gym shorts, as I recall.

 

And here was Alvin dancing around wildly in the Littlefield Fountain !

 

To try to get a visual picture of what this scene might have looked like, please take a look at this YouTube video clip of the Littlefield Fountain. It’s a short but funny video clip of Jimmy Fallon diving into the waters of this extremely central monument on the University of Texas at Austin’s main campus.

 

And while you’re watching this video clip, try to imagine what a typical University of Texas student or faculty member might have been thinking if they just happened to be walking by the Littlefield Fountain when Alvin was dancing in it !

 

CLICK HERE FOR SHORT BUT FUNNY VIDEO CLIP OF JIMMY FALLON DIVING INTO LITTLEFIELD FOUNTAIN (13 seconds)

 

As an aside….Juxtapose this vision of Alvin’s peaceful ‘Krisha-Rama Dance’ in the fountain near the campus Clocktower, with the ongoing debate over the Texas legislation that would allow concealed guns to be carried on campus and in the classroom (not to mention, in the Austin State Capitol building as well !).

 

Perhaps you recall, that in 1966 an ex-marine went up to the top of the University Clocktower with a huge arsenal of assault rifles, and opened fire on the innocent bystanders below, killing 16 people and seriously wounding another 30.

 

The juxtaposition of Alvin’s peaceful dance verses the violence of the 1966 Clocktower massacre reminds me of the famous 1967 photo of the anti-war protester putting flowers inside soldier’s rifles.

 

For those of you who are interested in learning more about this ongoing ‘guns on campus’ debate in Texas, here’s a YouTube video clip which will give you an overview of the debate, including commentary from a student who witnessed his friend being shot during the 1966 Clocktower shooting. CLICK HERE to watch the video clip. (4:32 minutes)

 

Anyway, back to Alvin….

 

So can you imagine how mind-blowing this scene was to me, witnessing Alvin’s appearance out of the Blue !

 

Given my previous experiences being guided by the spirit world, I’m sure you can understand that I viewed Alvin’s  ‘Austin visitation’ as a miraculous sign from the Universe.

 

Now the ‘signs’ weren’t lost on me that there was somehow a connection between the BLUE-skinned Krishna tattoo that the Universe had me put on my arm and Alvin’s blue-skinned appearance first in NYC and now in Austin, as well as my recent visit to the Neem Karoli Baba Hindu Ashram in Taos.

I think it’s important to at the very least acknowledge the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), also known as the Hare Krishna movement that was founded in 1966 in New York City by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, and rose to international prominence primarily due to it’s most famous disciple: George Harrison of The Beatles. After the death of  A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in 1977, the movement lost most of its steam, although many Hindu guru’s like Neem Karoli Baba, have continued to popularize Krishna and other Hindu deities through the present day.

 

George Harrison repeatedly sang the phrase ‘Hare Krishna’ in his song ‘My Sweet Lord’. Harrison was one of the main popularizers and supporters of the  movement in the West.

Here he is with His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada, the main Guru of the Hare Krishna Movement.

 

George Harrison and the Krishna-Consciousness Movement

 

Here’s a YouTube video Tribute to George Harrison and his connection to the Krishna-Consciousness movement of the 1960’s & 1970’s. In this video, they discuss how George wrote “My Sweet Lord” as a tribute to Krishna. Click HERE to watch the video. (29:42 minutes)

 

It also wasn’t lost on me the archetypal similarities between Krishna, who is often depicted as playing the flute, and Kokopelli, also depicted as a flute player, thus reinforcing the connection between the Southwest and Hinduism (Neem Karoli Baba ashram in Taos).

 

 

 

 

Let’s take a small dive into some of Austin WEIRDness by watching the following YouTube video clip (10:18 minutes).

 

Sorry, the Universe was saying to me, that I would NOT be having a safe, comfortable Hallucinogenic Trip closely monitored by responsible professional therapists today!!

 

Searching YouTube for a video that best captures what I experienced on my one and only magic mushroom trip, I settled on the following 2-hour amazing psychedelic imagery ‘journey’ entitled: The Splendor of Color Kaleidoscope Video v 1.2 , produced by HD Colors.

 

. Enjoy!

 

Onward….

 

She must have felt the same mystical connection to me as I felt towards her, because we were inseparable thereafter, spending the rest of the afternoon walking around the festival.

 

Towards the end of the afternoon, she amazingly asked me if I wanted to come with her to Wavy Gravy’s Clown Camp in
Laytonville, California ( Camp Winnarainbow  https://www.campwinnarainbow.org/)  this coming summer.

 

There is great and touching video footage of what Camp Winnarainbow is like during a typical summer in the movie ‘Saint Misbehaving’ – the Wavy Gravy movie.

 

Wavy Gravy’s Camp Winnarainbow describes itself as a Northern California circus and performing arts summer camp,  committed to being socially conscious with amazing teaching artists and campers from every walk of life. It creates an inclusive, accepting environment, utilizing creativity, diversity and passion to have BIG FUN and learn from each other.

To boot, she said she would pay for me to attend the two-week camp, and I could stay with her in her house in Nevada City, California a few days before the camp so we could travel there together.

Since the summer camp was a few months away, and she would be heading back to Nevada City shortly after the Kerville festival, I told her I would have to tie up a few things in Austin to make this California trip happen.

Giving me her contact information, we reluctantly said goodbye for now.

 

 

(Tantric) Goddess World Calling !

 

Shortly after the Kerrville Festival, I magically received a call from an old friend from New York days, inviting me to help
her to ‘Bless’ the opening of her new ‘Goddess Temple’ at her rental house in Marin County, California.

 

Why did she think of me to do this ‘Blessing’?

 

She was one of the first people I was guided to do healings on following my leaving the healing school in 1991. We met at a healer networking event at this cool alternative-healing rental space in Manhattan.

 

Magically we ‘just happened’ to be sitting next to each other on the couch.

 

She was a healer in her own right, doing a special type of ‘Tantric Massage’. She was doing her massage work out
of a healing center in New Jersey where she lived at the time.

 

I would make the trek from Long Island to New Jersey once a week, as I recall, to practice energy healing on her (to her delight, as she loved my healings, even at this early stage of my evolution as an Aura Healer).

 

She was one of the few people I kept in touch with over a long stretch of time (16 years?) where I was doing intensive
meditation and inner transformation work, healing myself of layers and layers of emotional blocks I had collected from
this and past lives.

 

We talked frequently on the phone about all things metaphysical, usually ending with me channeling guidance for her from the spirit world.

 

She was part of the ‘Goddess Movement’ that emerged out of the Feminist Movement of the 1960s and 70’s.

 

The Goddess Movement, at first, seemed like women getting together with other women to heal from abusive marriages and other emotional suffering from being a woman in a male-dominated society.

 

Over time however, this movement became much more widely embraced by men, particularly men in the LGBTQ world.

 

I for one, though heterosexual, felt a kinship with the Goddess, veering away from aggressive male behavior, and cultivating the softer, more feminine qualities of empathy, compassion, imagination, and worrying about the environmental abuse of ‘Mother Earth’.

 

Here is a YouTube video series which I feel has the appropriate reverential approach to  the ‘Goddess Movement’.
It’d be an investment of your time to watch the 3 parts, but worth it if you’d like to appreciate the depth and profundity
of this vital movement.

 

Here are the links:

Pt 1. Goddess Remembered(54:34 minutes) Click HERE to watch

 

Pt 2. The Burning Times (56:15 minutes) Click HERE to watch

 

Pt 3.  Women and Spirituality : Full Circle. Click HERE to watch

 

I had some of my own previous history with sensitizing myself with what it meant to connect with ‘The Goddess’.

 

All the way back in my ‘Metaphysical Learning Explosion’ days, besides my week-long experience audio-taping the ecofeminist and ‘Goddess Awakener’, Starhawk…

-I also had the fortune of audio-taping Jean Shendoah Bolen, author of
‘Goddesses In Every Woman’,
-Barbara G. Walker, who wrote many books on the Goddess,

I was also exposed in one way or another to such Goddess luminaries as:
-Marija Gimbutas,
-Riane Eisler,
-Joan Halifax
and many others.

 

Not to mention all the ‘Goddess Healers’ I studied with like Barbara Ann Brennan, Roslyn Bruyere, and Patricia Sun, to name a few.

 

Let’s also not forget my mind-blowing ‘Wake-Up Call’ by the ‘Mother Stone’ at the Easter Aquhorthies stone circle in Scotland.

 

Or being greeted by ‘Mother Nature’ at the front gates of the Vermont Rainbow Gathering, who somehow was ‘waiting for me’, so I could lead healing workshops at her J.E.S.U.S. campsite!

 

Or being guided to get a tattoo of the Great Goddess on my arm (one of the 3 images).

 

 

Or being forgiven by the 200 Martial Art Chinatown spirits when I assured them that I was back in THIS lifetime to serve ‘The Mother’ , and not to cultivate any martial art abilities that I apparently had abused in a past life.

 

So, somehow my old friend from NY/NJ days just ‘knew’ I would be the right person to ‘Bless’ her new ‘Goddess Temple’!

 

So after tying up a few things in Austin, I boarded an Amtrak train to the Bay Area, California.

 

I ended up staying with my friend in her ‘Goddess Temple’ Marin County rental home for a few months until Wavy Gravy’s summer camp began where then I would rendezvous with my Kerrville Folk Festival friend at her home in Nevada City, Ca. to drive to camp together.

 

These Marin few months, in hindsight, was my crash course into ‘The Goddess Culture’ and in particular, to the Tantric dimension of The Goddess Culture, at least as it expressed itself in the early 1990’s in Northern California!

 

The first highlight came the first night I arrived where about 10 people chatted it up, all naked in the backyard hot tub of my friend’s next door neighbor.

 

Her neighbors were ‘Tantra Teachers’, who’s practice it was to help couples (primarily) break through blocks and dysfunction in the sexual/intimate aspects of their relationship.

 

Highly simplified, there are two main branches of Tantra, one that includes sexual intimacy with a partner, and one that
is solely internal and meditative, not involving a partner. Both of these branches of Tantra go back to ancient India.

 

The non-sexual branch of Tantra has historically been practiced by gurus, mystics, and spiritual teachers intent on going within to experience ‘Nirvana’ or ‘Enlightenment’.

 

This non-sexual Tantra is a type of yoga and meditation that weaves together various techniques, such as mantras, visualization, mudras, breathing techniques, stillness, sound, and initiations to open the chakras.

 

Tantric Buddhism, also called Vajrayana Buddhism, emerged in various parts of India and Sri Lanka some time between the 2nd and 4th century CE.

 

This tradition focuses on mystical practices and concepts that lead to enlightenment.

 

According to the Kalachakra-tantra text, the Buddha taught that you can only achieve enlightenment through the body, which contains the whole cosmos.

 

In Tantric Buddhism, reaching enlightenment involves identifying with deities representing various cosmic forces.

Buddhist monks use mudras (sacred hand movements), mantras (sacred chants), and mandalas (hypnotic, symmetrical designs) to visualize and invoke these divinities.

 

 

 

 

This next video clip is a poem that really stuck me as capturing the essence of the truly Sacred Tantra Sexual Experience.

Click HERE to watch the whole documentary that this poem came from. “Tantra” by the YouTube Holistic Channel (49:13 minutes).  It is very informative.

 

Here are a few clips from assorted ‘Tantra Workshops’ that may give you a sense of what they experience and what you may experience if
you are interested in trying one out.

 

Awaken as Love Tantra Festivals (2:02 minutes) Click Here to watch

 

Tantra Transformation Retreat, Bali 21-27 April 2023 (1 minute) Click Here to watch

 

Making Love A Priority w/ Dharmaraj : May 17-18, Ubud, Bali

 

I should mention that my friend, and many of her friends, both male and female, were followers of the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, also known as Osho (d. 1990).

 

In some, mostly culturally reactionary circles, he is portrayed as the ‘Sex Guru’, because he and his disciples (called Sannyasins) embrace sexuality, in addition to many other non-sexual techniques, to achieve ‘Nirvana’ or ‘Enlightenment’.

 

Even though I personally was not attracted to Rajneesh and becoming a Sinnyasin, I  have met many Sannyasins whom I respect as being true seekers of spiritual enlightenment, including my Marin Goddess friend.

 

I’m going to leave it to you to search out a Netflix series about the Rajneesh commune in Oregon in the early 1980s. This series captures the amazing, as well as the tragic dimensions of 1000s of Sinnyasins following an Indian ‘Tantric Guru’ trying to create his ‘Tantric Ashram Commune’ in a predominantly Christian American town in the 1980s.

 

After the commune’s initial promise, its ending was extremely dark.

 

Nevertheless, here I was invited to bless my friend’s Marin County Goddess Temple.

 

The next day was the ‘Blessing Ceremony’.

 

My friend had a closet full of all kinds of exotic, yet primarily skimpy, costumes to wear for the ceremony.

 

I think my costume involved colored, cheese cloth, virtually see-through pantaloons, and an ‘Aladdin-like, fake-jewel-laden, embroidered vest, worn over my bare chest.

 

My friend also gave me some ‘interesting’ jewelry to wear, as well as spending some time painting my face with psychedelic swirls and such.

 

Getting the picture?

 

There were a good 20 to 30 people who celebrated with us during this ‘Goddess Temple Opening Day’!

 

It was a lot of fun, really.

 

Other highlights of these ‘Tantric Goddess’ months, were ‘Tantric mansion parties’ with 100+ plus, exotically and scantily dressed ‘Goddesses and their consort gods’ mingling in an agreed-upon openly sensual atmosphere.

 

There were so many rooms and spaces to ‘connect’ with other Goddesses and their consort gods, including ‘closed door’ rooms where those who entered agreed to be ‘open to group intimacy’, to put it in more Goddess-Exalted terms!

 

For the record, I never entered these closed door rooms. But I did enjoy mingling with others in this agreed-upon openly sensual atmosphere!

 

I think I’ll leave the memory of these ‘interesting’ Marin months right here.

 

I do thank the Universe for this sensual and costumed ‘tour’ through this world of early 1990s Marin County, California Tantric Goddess culture!

 

 

Wavy Gravy Clown (circus and performing arts) Camp

 

During this Camp Winnarainbow, week-long ‘Adult Camper’ program (taking place before the children camper summer programs)   I was well known as the beanie propeller guy!

It turned out that the attractive woman I came with, and who payed for the week-long camp for me, was typically off with her guitar during the evening hours, jamming with others until all hours of the night. I don’t recall what activities she chose to experience during the daytime.

 

I typically retired pretty early to our tent to get needed sleep, so I could continue “trying”  to learn how to juggle, unicycle, stilt walk, and be a clown and .

 

Honestly, I was a complete doofus in most everything I tried!

 

As mentioned, I had no previous talent in, nor real interest in, being a clown and/or anything circus-related.

 

I am actually a rather serious soul!

 

So why did the Universe bring me there and even pay for me to attend?

 

Honestly, it’s a question I’m still trying to answer!

 

I should say right now that I do come to some conclusions at the VERY END of this story.

 

But to get to the end of this story, I will be taking you to a different Woodstock than the 1969 one that Wavy Gravy is famous for.

 

No, this story will end at Woodstock 1999, where I was part of an energy-healer-massage team that somehow survived unscathed as the
violent riots and fires raged around our healing tent.

 

I took this Woodstock 99′ experience, as I do most everything in my life, as a mystical sign from a higher source.

 

Why was I guided to be there to witness Woodstock 99′, which can arguably be considered the antithesis of the 69′ three days of Peace and Music where Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm helped to show the world the Hippy vision of the Human Family getting along peacefully where we all take care of each other.

To get to some of my conclusions about this whole guided ‘tour’ the Universe took me on, mystically guiding me through the Southwest & West Coast and then back to New York, I feel the need to do some digging into the turbulent 1960’s and the role that Wavy Gravy, the Hippy movement, as well as the Yippy movement played leading me to Wavy’s Camp Winnarainbow and then eventually to Woodstock 99′.

What lessons does the Universe want me to learn by doing this ‘deep dive’ into Wavy Gravy’s story?

 

Let’s dive in and see where we end up, OK?

 

This next ‘passage’ will be long, but please stay with the unfoldment of these historical events; events as seen through a Wavy Gravy lens.

 

Here we go…

 

I was born in 1960 to a mother who was a long-time activist for social change.

 

Even though she was already 35 in 1960, she was ‘hip’ to the social change movements of the tumultuous 1960s.

 

She had roots in the Union Movement (1940’s),  Civil Rights Movement (1950’s-1960’s), Woman’s Movement (1970’s), Anti-War Movement (1960’s-1970’s), the Environmental Movement (1950’s-1970s), etc.

 

During the 1940’s, she was also on the summer staff at Camp Unity (as a waitress, I believe) , which Wikipedia describes as a politically liberal-affiliated summer resort for adults located in the Berkshire Mountains just east of Poughkeepsie.

 

It was one of the first multiracial camps in the United States.

 

She spoke of being friends with Paul Robeson Jr., who Wikipedia lists as a being there.

 

Some other notable people who were associated in some way with Camp Unity, were Lead Belly,  Harry Belafonte,  Herschel Bernardi, Dizzie Gillespie, Phillip Rose, and Lorraine Hansberry, to name only a few.

 

Camp Unity was among the organizations investigated by Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during the Red Scare .

 

My mother was deeply troubled by the HUAC Blacklisting of suspected Communists during the Cold War 1950’s.

 

Although I was really too young at the time, I’m pretty sure she was involved in the Anti-Vietnam War protests, particularly at Queens College
where she went back to school at age 40 to get her Psychology degree.

 

She was also part of the Folk Music scene of the 1950’s and early 1960’s.

 

She loved Pete Seeger, The Weavers, The Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul & Mary, Harry Belafonte, Odeta, Phil Ochs, early Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, etc.

 

She also took me and my sister to see the play HAIR shortly after it opened on Broadway.

 

I wouldn’t call my mother a ‘hippy’ by any stretch, but her sympathies were definitely with the youth movement(s) of the ’60s.

 

My father was not really on the same page as my mother.

 

Being a NYC businessman, he had a much more hardened perspective on things.

 

To his credit though, he did spend many years attending cutting-edge psychology and philosophy classes after work at The New School , which
was only a few blocks from his factory.

 

Why am I mentioning all this?

 

I am trying to understand why the Universe had me come to Wavy Gravy’s Clown Camp…

 

…having me give up my promising teaching career to become some Rainbow Healing Minister at 2 Rainbow Gatherings…

 

…having me get baptized…

 

…and tattooed…

 

…not to mention my sometimes dangerous hitchhiking southwestern ‘adventures’.

 

Why, at the age of 30, was my whole previous career and fundamental identity, being tuned upside down?

 

I somehow felt that I had lost a good amount of my young adult years (1980 – 1990) busting my butt trying to create a career:

 

First Rock/Jazz Musician, then Physics & Engineering scientist, then H.S. Physics Teaching , and NOW?  A RAINBOW HEALING CLOWN MINISTER?  Oy Vey! .

 

I had really been living as a kind of  ‘Square’ during my Physics & Engineering school years.

 

I thought to myself that perhaps I was a ‘hippy’ in a past life, even a political-activist ‘clown type’ of hippy like Wavy Gravy.

 

Just like when I boarded the Waldorf school bus and somehow tapped some latent ‘Yippy’ power,  playing ‘Your Mama don’t Dance and your Daddy don’t Rock n’ Roll’ wildly with my ukulele for the kids!

 

The Universe seemed to want to show me something about my latent hippy identity, and it seems as though I was somehow to understand
this identity through focusing on the example of Wavy Gravy (as well as Ram Dass, Larry Brilliant, and various other role models who’s examples seemed to have importing lessons for me to ponder).

 

Now when I first read Wavy Gravy’s book ‘Something Good For A Change’, back before the Universe took me to the Southwest, I really didn’t
have any deep historical sense of who Wavy Gravy was, except that he was the MC at Woodstock.

 

I was too young in 1969 to understand the significance of Woodstock.

 

I didn’t know anyone who went to Woodstock, and indeed, I really didn’t know any ‘hippies’ at that time, nor for years following that event.

 

I did see the movie Woodstock many years later, and that is how I knew at least that Wavy Gravy was the MC, or had some kind of role communicating to the concert goers important information from the stage.

 

So it is only NOW that I feel driven to get to the ROOTS of the 1960’s, particularly wanting to know if WAVY GRAVY WAS ONE OF THE ‘FOUNDERS’ OF THE HIPPY MOVMENT.

 

After a good amount of research on Google, YouTube, and relevant documentaries on some streaming service sites…

 

…THE ANSWER IS YES!  Wavy Gravy was THERE AT THE VERY BEGINNING of the hippy movement of the 1960’s.

 

Although I would categorize this next section as one of my ‘OPTIONAL’ sections, I would still recommend reading through it and spending
some time watching the assorted video documents.

 

To me, this is important history.

 

Wavy Gravy is an important soul, and an inspiration to follow, if only in attitude and spirit.

 

So here goes… Let’s take a LONG STRANGE TRIP back to the origins of the hippy movement.

 

**Note: I’ve done enough reading and watching videos to paint a reasonably broad brushstroke here. If any of these brushstrokes piques your
interest and curiosity,  I believe I  have provided enough information for you to go deeper with any of these historical events.

 

The Grandfathers of the Hippies

 

The “Beats”

 

Going all the way back to 1940’s New York City, 3 major literary icons of the ”Beat Generation” created the ‘soil’ for the Hippy movement of the 1960s to eventually bloom.

 

It was Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs.

 

I will keep Burroughs off to the side of this story, because he has his own unique literary style (the ‘cut-up’ method), as well as his own
multi-continent, convoluted, and troubled journey.

 

This said, his story is fascinating and essential to the story of the Beat Generation. So I’m including here a link to a documentary about
him called:  “William S. Burroughs – A Man Within, 2010” (1 hour and 28 minutes). Click HERE to watch

 

I will focus instead on the other 2 ‘Beat Grandfathers’ : Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

 

The Censorship Trials

 

Let me start with Ginsberg.

 

In 1956, Allen Ginsberg published his poem HOWL

 

1957 obscenity trial

On March 25th, 1957, US Customs confiscated 500 copies of HOWL that were being imported from Britain.

 

In June ’57, a bookstore in San Francisco published HOWL and the publisher was arrested because US officials deeming the book obscene  due to HOWL’s many sexual references (heterosexual and homosexual), as well as lines referencing illegal drugs.

 

At the obscenity trial, many literary experts testified on behalf of HOWL’s importance as a literary work, and with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, finally was declared to have “Redeeming Social Importance” by the Superior Court of California.

 

Both Time and Life magazines ran articles on the trial, thus increasing it’s popularity.

Click HERE to watch the trailer (you can buy or rent on YouTube) to a really good movie about Ginsberg’s HOWL staring James Franco as Ginsberg.

 

I will get to Jack Kerouac’s massive contribution to the Hippies of the ’60s shortly. But first let me introduce into the story our main focus,
Wavy Gravy who, performing initially as Hugh Romney, was following in the footsteps of the Beat Poets,  reading Beat-like poetry at the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village in 1958.

 

After serving 2 years in the Army, Hugh Romney, under the GI bill, studied improvisational theater at Boston College.

 

After college, Romney moved to Greenwich Village to become a poet and comedian. He regularly performed at the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village, eventually becoming the talent manager and MC for the Gaslight.

 

As an intriguing side story, Hugh Romney was living upstairs from Bob Dylan around this time at 116 MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village.

 

My mother, by the way, was living in Greenwich Village on Jane Street during the 1950s. I wouldn’t doubt that she was a regular at the Gaslight Cafe!

 

But let me briefly connect Hugh Romney to the Censorship Trials happening, not only to Allen Ginsberg, but also to Hugh Romney’s MANAGER,
LENNY BRUCE!

 

Bruce was clearly influenced by the ‘Beat Generation Poets’, and he adapted a ‘ stream of consciousness, jazz-like, improvisational comedy style’, which like Ginsberg’s HOWL,  had a lot of sex and drugs in his routines, as well as other ‘touchy topics’ like religion, race and politics.

 

At a performance in Chicago in ’62, Lenny Bruce was arrested and convicted of an Illinois statute about Obscenity .

 

In a landmark decision, the Illinois Supreme Court in People v. Bruce (Ill. 1964) ruled that Bruce’s comedy routine was not obscenity, but instead was social commentary.

This Landmark Trial solidified First Amendment Rights for countless multi-disciplinary artists (poets, comedians, writers, musicians, artists, etc.) to come.

On the Road

 

In 1946, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac met Neil Cassady, who was someone living his life searching relentlessly for constant sensory experiences.

 

Kerouac’s seminal 1957 book “On The Road” was based on Kerouac and Cassady’s three years travelling travelling across America between 1947 and 1950.

 

The inspiration for the book came from a letter that Cassady wrote to Kerouac in 1950. Cassady’s letter writing style was fast, rambling, confessional, spontaneous, with a first-person ‘Gonzo’ madness (to borrow a phrase from the ’60s and ’70’s Rolling Stone reporter Hunter Thompson).

 

Kerouac felt this 40-page letter, which Cassady penned while high on Benzedrine,  was the greatest piece of writing he’d ever seen.

 

Neil Cassady becomes the main connecting link between the ‘Beat Generation’ of the ’40s and ’50s, and the Hippy Generation of the ’60s and beyond.

 

Cassady traveled cross-country with both Kerouac and Ginsberg on multiple occasions, but after a 2 year San Quentin State prison stint for selling marijuana to an undercover agent that ended in 1960, Cassady sought out the most relentlessly constant sensory experiences he could find in California…

 

…Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.

 

Ken Kesey

 

You can learn all about Kesey and the Merry Prankster’s 1964 LSD-inspired trip across America in the 2011 movie “Magic Trip”, directed by Alex Gibney.

This to me is truly an important event in American history!

I should mention here that in 1964, LSD was not on the US Government’s list of illegal substances! The first laws making LSD illegal was in October of 1966.

So technically, Kesey and the Merry Pranksters weren’t doing anything illegal.

Indeed, Kesey and the others all dressed in red, white and blue stars-and-stripes clothing as they played it ‘mostly’ straight interacting with main street America on this trip.

Neil Cassady had a lot of experience talking to cops , having mastered the art during ‘On The Road’ with Kerouac.

As mentioned, Kesey was no Hippy at this time, just a ‘normal’ American citizen who’s had his ‘normal American’ mind blown by Government sanctioned LSD experiments.

Kesey saw no reason why he shouldn’t make this cross-country trip to try to ‘turn on normal Americans’ to this mind-blowing LSD experience!

Also, one of the main Merry Pranksters, Ken Babbs, had just returned from Vietnam.

He was a Marine and a helicopter pilot who had flown many missions in ‘Nam’.

He too was no Hippy at this point. This was still very early in the Vietnam War, and the youth anti-war protests would
still be a few years ahead.

We’ll come back to Ken Babb’s contribution to the birth of the hippy movement shortly.

But first, I’d like to mention another important stop on Kesey’s and the Merry Prankster’s ’64 New York ‘trip’:

The International Federation For Internal Freedom

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CALIFORNIA HIPPY REVOLUTION – 1965

 

When Kesey and the Pranksters finally returned to Kesey’s La Honda, California Farm in 1965, they started holding weekly gatherings to watch
the 16mm footage that they had shot on their ‘Magic Bus Trip’ across America.

 

At a certain point, the gatherings got so big at Kesey’s farm that he urged others to find bigger spaces to have these ‘parties’.

 

So it was that the first of the ‘ Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests’ (as immortalized in the 1968 nonfiction book by Tom Wolfe) took place at Ken Babbs’ house on 27 November 1965.

 

 

This party at Ken Babbs’ is also important as the very last gig by the band ‘The Warlocks’, who one week later changed their name to The Grateful Dead!  Here’s the flyer for this very 1st Acid Test:

 

 

Finally, here’s where Wavy Gravy (still Hugh Romney) re-enters the story.

 

A few weeks after the Trips Festival in San Francisco, the Merry Pranksters had an idea to bring LSD and the Acid Tests to Southern California with the intention to try to help heal racial unease a year after the Watts Riots.

 

With the Grateful Dead in tow, the Pranksters drove up to Los Angeles. Neil Cassady was at the wheel. (Kesey was not with them due to his Marijuana arrest – see below for more on Kesey’s arrest and imprisonment).

 

Although the exact chain of events have been hard for me to nail down, apparently Ken Babbs abandons the Merry Pranksters in LA, and hijacks the bus to Mexico.

Thus enters Wavy Gravy (Hugh Romney) as the MC of the first Los Angeles Acid Test, hosting the Grateful Dead.

This event took place at ‘The Onion’ (the nick name given to the Sepulveda Unitarian Universalist Society due to it’s onion shape).

This very first LA acid test occurred on February 5th, 1966, although I’ve seen a few different dates given within this same month of February on a few different internet pages.

 

At this time, Hugh Romney was living and working in Southern California.

He was teaching improvisational acting skills at Columbia Pictures, while his wife, Bonnie Beecher (eventually Jahanara Romney) was having a successful acting career on such television shows as ‘The Twilight Zone’, ‘Gunsmoke’, ‘and ‘Star Trek’.

 

Following the Acid Test at the ‘Onion’. the stranded Pranksters stuck around LA, coalescing around Hugh Romney who, after first trying to create a Prankster-colored commune in North Hollywood, moved his constantly growing ‘collective’ to a little two-room cabin in the San Fernando Valley suburbs of the north of Los Angeles.

 

The HOG Farm

 

When the landlord of the tiny two-room cabin came by and saw 40 people living there, Romney and the ‘collective’ were evicted.

 

But as fate would have it……two hours after being evicted, a neighbor drove down the road and told Romney that a Hog farmer named Saul who lived just up the road,  just had a stroke and might let him and his ‘collective’ live there if they would take care of his Hogs in exchange for rent.

 

Thus the Hog Farm Commune was born on this mountaintop in the Verdugo Hills overlooking Burbank, California.

 

There’s actual movie footage of these early years at the Hog Farm. You can watch it on Apple TV / itunes.

 

 

Thus, in this twist of fate, Hugh Romney sort of became the de-facto leader of the Merry Pranksters, the ‘Hog Farm Collective’ now being uniquely positioned to become the next ‘guiding lights’ of the Hippy Generation.

 

By contrast, Ken Kesey had had enough of the Hippy lifestyle after being released from prison after 5 months, returning to his family in Oregon where he lived the rest of his life more or less reclusive and family-focused.

 

Having had so much experience with putting on events like the Trips Festival,  with Romney now as the (default) head of the Pranksters, the Hog Farm evolved into an entertainment group providing light shows at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles for such music artists as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Cream, and Jimi Hendrix.

 

As a side story…

Jorma Kaukonen, original guitarist and vocalist of the Jefferson Airplane, and co-founder of Hot Tuna, was giving guitar lessons at Camp Winnarainbow while I was there.

He was also one of the featured guests at the 75th Wavy Gravy Birthday Seva Charity event that I attended in 2011.

Even though Jorma never knew my name, he might possibly remember me as the beanie propeller guy at Camp that summer.


He always shined a huge smile at me when I passed him every morning!  Thanks for being such a cool dude Jorma!

 

I would be amiss if I didn’t mention the massive impact of Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 hit song “White Rabbit”, which became one of the very first songs to have lyrics about hallucinogenic drugs that made it past the radio censors. This song hit the top-10 on Billboard’s Hot 100.

As is well known, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin & Big Brother and the Holding Company, were at the very beginning of the ’60s hippy movement as it flowered in California.

AND WAVY GRAVY was there with these bands at the beginning!

 

The Hog Farm Bus Caravan

 

From the money earned as extras in Otto Preminger’s film “Skidoo”, Romney and the Prankster Collective bought a bunch of school buses which they converted into psychedelics spectacles similar to Kesey’s bus ‘Further’.

The original Hog Farm bus was called ‘Road Hog’. Here’s a photo of the ‘Road Hog’:

 

Beginning in 1967, the collective began traveling across the country in their ever-expanding caravan of psychedelic buses.

 

Wavy Gravy described their Hog Farm caravan as  a “…Light show, a rock band, a painting, a poem, an anti-war rally, an anthem for freedom and change.”

Making their way across America, they became known for putting on inspirational shows, conceived as ‘free participatory carnivals’ or ‘happenings’.

These shows promoted peace and joy, performing for thousands of ‘hippy-curious’ people in Indian reservations, rodeo grounds, and college campuses all across the country.


This was 1967, the ‘Summer of Love’.

 

In the summer of 1968 the 40-bus Hog Farm caravan brought the Yippie party presidential candidate, Pigasus the Pig, to Chicago to be nominated for President at the upcoming 68′ Democratic convention.

The Yippies, or the Youth International Party (YIP),  was a youth-oriented radical and countercultural revolutionary party, founded in December 1967.

It was an offshoot of the anti-war and free speech movements of the late 1960s, focusing on Prankster-like theatrics to mock the American status quo.

The Yippy party founders were Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Paul Krassner, among others, although there was no formal membership or hierarchy to the ‘Party’ .

 

Krassner was the one who coined the name Yippies.

He was also one of the original Hippies as a member of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters.


He was also a protégé of Lenny Bruce back in the very early ’60’s, who encouraged him to perform stand up comedy in New York clubs.
Krassner edited Bruce’s autobiography, ‘How to Talk Dirty and Influence People’.

 

So Paul Krassner was the link between the West Coast Hippies, and the East Coast, Manhattan based, Yippies.

 

Krasner felt this new ‘Party’ needed a name signifying the political radicalization of hippies, whereas up until then Hippies were mostly associated with taking drugs and promoting peace and love.

Hippies were non-violent whereas Yippies were more aggressive political activists while still employing Prankster-like antics to make their political statements.

 

On October 21, 1967 there was an anti-Vietnam War protest rally at the Lincoln Memorial.  Phil Ochs performed and there were some serious speakers like Norman Mailer and Noam Chomsky, as well as some more Yippie-inspired speeches.

 

The protesters then marched towards the Pentagon from the Lincoln Memorial where they were blocked by Army soldiers.

At this point,  Abbie Hoffman claimed he would use psychic energy to levitate the Pentagon, saying this would somehow end the Vietnam war.


Hoffman was spiritually supported by Allen Ginsberg who led Tibetan chants.

 

Another famous Yippie prank occurred in New York City on August 24, 1967.

Abbie Hoffman and a group of Yippies got into  the New York Stock Exchange on a tour and threw handfuls of real and fake money from the balcony down to the traders below.

Some of the traders began to frantically try to grab the money.

This Yippie prank helped cement Hoffman’s reputation as one of America’s most creative and outlandish protestors.

 

Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman were subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1967, whereupon they mocked the proceedings through the outfits they wore: Jerry Rubin dressed as an American Revolution soldier one time and draped with a Viet Cong flag another time, while Abbie Hoffman wore an American flag as an outfit.

 

But the most well known Yippie protest and arrest came during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, August 23–28, 1968.

 

In the month’s  leading up to the Convention, the Yippies were behind two New York City ‘happenings’, the “Yip-In” at Grand Central Station, and the “Yip-Out” in Central Park.

Both events were planned as a trial run for Chicago. These events were mostly peaceful though, in contrast to what happened at the Chicago Convention.

 

One big difference between the primarily peaceful NYC Yippy events and what transpired at the Convention, was that New York City Mayor Lindsay finally gave the Yippies the official permits they needed to hold their event.

This ultimately successful negotiation between the Mayor and the Yippies only happened after the Yippies staged a sit-in at the Mayor’s office.

In the end, the Yippies got what they needed to put on an event that more likely than not, wouldn’t end in violence.

The permit gave them staging, electricity, bathrooms, and police presence among other things for running a successful music festival. 

 

Chicago Mayor Daley obviously didn’t follow NYC Mayor Lindsey’s example, because he refused to grant any permits for the Yippies nor for any other Anti-War protesters to gather and peacefully protest at parks near the ’68 Democratic Convention.

 

Yes it is true that leading up to the Convention, Yippies’ made pretty radical speeches, held rallies and demonstrations, wrote articles, and distributed fliers,  announcing they were coming to Chicago.

 

And yes it is true that the Yippies made some statements leading up to the Convention that likely alarmed Mayor Daley and the Chicago police.

 

In their more ‘Prankster’ theatrical statements, the Yippies threatened to put LSD in Chicago’s water supply and would be openly fornicating on Chicago beaches. Even though these type of Yippie statements weren’t meant to be taken seriously, I doubt Chicago authorities were laughing.

 

By contrast, other Yippie statements seemed a bit more ominous. Like threats to throw nails down from road overpasses; placing cars so they would block main intersections,  police stations and National Guard stations.

 

Perhaps the most threatening statement from the Yippies was that the actual Convention would be stormed.

 

Ultimately, none of these Yippie threats happened.

 

What did happen could have been prevented if Mayor Daley had just followed Mayor Lindsay’s example to give the protesters a permit to protest peacefully.

 

Before getting to the violent chaos of the Convention though, I think it’s important to give the context for the protests.

 

The first tremors of the social earthquake that erupted at the August 1968 Democratic Convention came on January 30, 1968, when the North Vietnamese launched a massive surprise attack on the South who were backed by us, the US.

This was called the Tet Offensive.

The North launched the attack on the Vietnamese Lunar New Year  (Tết Nguyên Đán).

 

Prior to the Tet Offensive,  the U.S. claimed that American military personnel were merely observers, not combatants.

 

The North Vietnamese surprise attack occurred during the early morning hours of 31 January.

The offensive was countrywide; eventually more than 80,000 North Vietnamese troops struck more than 100 towns and cities, including provincial capitals.

It was the largest military operation by either side up to that point in the war.

 

 

In the wake of the Tet Offensive,  “Uncle Walter” Cronkite, , decided to go to Vietnam to find out what was ‘really’ going on.

 

Cronkite had up until then never taken a public position on the war.

He had a reputation as the ultimate objective straight shooter which he believed gave him special standing in being able to assess what was really happening in Vietnam.

Indeed, Cronkite was viewed by many as the most trusted man in America.

 

On February 27, 1968, Cronkite filed his 30-minute Vietnam report.

Tens of millions of Americans tuned to his broadcast.

In the broadcast, he offered his assessment that America was not winning the war, that at best was only fighting to a stalemate, and should try to find a way out of the war honorably.

 

On a personal note, my mother would scream at the TV every night, expressing her shock like so many others.

I believe my father was for the war, and/or he wasn’t going to jump on anti-war bandwagons at this juncture.

I was eight, so I really didn’t understand why my house was an embattled ‘war’ in it’s own right, with my parents screaming at each other every night during the nightly news.

 

The next ‘bomb’ to drop was on March 31 when President Johnson announce that he would not seek, and would not accept the nomination for President in the upcoming election.

 

In his 1964 campaign for President, running against Barry Goldwater, Johnson stated that the US is not about to send American boys thousands of miles away to do what the South Vietnamese should be doing for themselves.

 

As an aside, with the 1964 Presidential race going on between Johnson and Barry Goldwater, Kesey and the Merry Pranksters bus Further were simultaneously travelling through Arizona, and as a ‘Prank’, they painted “Vote For Barry For Fun” on the Bus.

Here’s a photo from the National Gallery of Art (I obviously highlighted the words in color) There is also good video footage of this ‘Prank’ in the movie ‘Magic Trip’:

I wonder how tuned in to all these National and International events Kesey and the Pranksters were in 1964, tripping on LSD and on route to the Worlds Fair?

 

Anyway…

 

America’s involvement in Vietnam took a dramatic turn in August 1964 when two American battleships were apparently torpedoed by North Vietnamese boats in the Gulf of Tonkin.

This led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution within which the US Congress gave Johnson permission to take any measures necessary to retaliate.

 

This Resolution resulted in a rapid increase of the U.S. military in Vietnam, escalating to over 200,000 troupes by the beginning of 1966, having drafted over 230,000 young men.

In addition, about 300,000 more young men were drafted every year after that until the war started to wind down in the early 1970s.

 

But after the Cronkite report, Johnson felt that he had lost the support of the most trusted man in America, ‘Uncle Walter’, and that as a result he had lost mainstream America.

 

Johnson’s March 31st announcement to not seek re-election was a real shock to most political experts, because it seemed that he would easily receive the Democratic Party’s nomination to serve a second four-year term and then handily win re-election against his Republican opponent in November.

His “Great Society” plan, a booming economy, along with public perception that the US was winning the war in Vietnam, created the aura of him being one of the greatest US Presidents.

 

Until ‘Uncle Walter’ broke with him on the war.

 

Johnson’s withdrawal created tremendous uncertainty leading up to the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention.

 

Eugene McCarthy entered the race earlier than Johnson’s withdrawal, doing so in November 1967.

He was a critic of Johnson’s handling of the Vietnam War (my mother supported him).

 

Then on March 16, 1968 New York Senator Robert Kennedy, a United States Senator entered the race.

Johnson’s withdrawal from the race came 2 weeks later.

To add to this political tumult, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated the next week, on April 4.

 

The King assassination caused riots in 100 cities across the country.

 

Chicago saw some of the worst rioting which left 11 dead, 48 wounded (by police gunfire), 90 policemen injured, and over 2,000 people arrested.

The rioters looted stores, broke windows, and set buildings on fire, both abandoned and occupied.

 

Over 10,000 police were sent in to stop the rioting, and by April 6, more than 6,000 Illinois National Guard troops had arrived with 5,000 US Army soldiers ordered by President Johnson.

While the National Army and Guard troops were only authorized to use tear gas on the rioters, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley gave police the authority to shoot to kill any rioter setting fires, and to ‘only’ maim, or cripple looters.

Then Johnson’s Vice President, Hubert Humphrey entered the Presidential race on April 27th.

 

Then one final explosion crashed into the American political fires: the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968

 

So I feel that we should have some empathy for the anti-war protesters, including the Yippies, who showed up at the Democratic National Convention Chicago that summer.

These youths were out of their minds with rage at ‘the status quo’ of America, and armed with both conventional and non-conventional strategies to disrupt the Convention.

 

As a result of my research, there is some confusion as to whether the Road-Hog-led, 40-bus caravan, Hog Farm entourage, was responsible for bringing Pigasus the Pig, to the 1968 Democratic Convention to be nominated by the Yippies as a candidate for president.

Most accounts credit Phil Ochs, the Yippie Musician, for purchasing Pigasus from a local farmer.

 

Pigasus’ was nominated on the morning of August 23, 1968, at the Chicago Civic Center, and then brought to the Convention rally in a station wagon.

 

Pigasus was then ‘arrested’ by police just as Jerry Rubin was reading the Pig’s ‘acceptance speech’.

Seven Yippies were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct but were released after each posted a $25 bond.

The pig was taken by police to the Chicago Animal Anti-Cruelty Society.

 

I’m going to spare you the details of the the police brutality Mayor Daley unleased not only on the protesters, but also on bystanders, reporters and photographers.

In all 100 protesters were treated for injuries, and 600 protesters were arrested.

Basically Mayor Daley applied the same type of ‘crack down’ on the protesters as he had 4 months earlier during the riots following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

 

There’s plenty of video footage and documentation of what many official investigations following the Convention labeled as a ‘Police Riot’.

 

Most of these investigations absolved the protesters of being the cause of the violence.

 

Nevertheless…

 

…Yippie leaders Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, along with 5 other more mainstream politically left Anti-War activist protesters, and 1 leader
of the Black Panther party, Bobby Seale, were federally charged with conspiracy to cross state lines with intent to start a riot, among other charges.

Interesting enough, the judge selected for the trial was the same Chicago judge who presided over the Lenny Bruce obscenity case, Julius Hoffman.

The defense brought in over 100 witnesses including Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Phil Ochs, Dick Gregory, Norman Mailer, Jesse Jackson, Arlo Guthrie and Judy Collins.

Phil Ochs spoke about the Presidential nominee, Pigasus the Pig.

Judy Collins sang “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”, and Allen Ginsberg chanted the Buddhist OM and recited poetry.

Yippie antics continuously disrupted the trial. Here are some of the highlights:

 

-In his opening statement when the government prosecutor read Abbie Hoffman’s name,  Hoffman stood up and blew the jury a kiss, the judge then had to direct the jury to disregard the kiss.

-Hoffman insulted the judge by saying in Yiddish that he was a disgrace to the Jewish community, grouping him with Hitler-like fascism, and saying that his form of justice was obscene.

-Jerry Rubin told the judge that his court was bullshit.

-Hoffman and Rubin wore judicial robes to the court, then throwing them down to step on them. Here’s a photo of the Yippie duo in the robes:

There’s a great movie available on Netflix about the trial. Here’s the poster for the movie:

 

 

Originally the Trial was called the Chicago 8, but after the judge declared Black Panther Bobby Seale’s particular case a mistrial, the trial became known as the Chicago 7 trial.

 

Everything related to Bobby Seale’s appearance in the courtroom before his eventual mistrial ruling, added to the overall chaos of the trial.

I will let you do your own research on this aspect of the trial, except to mention that the judge eventually had Seale bound, gagged, and chained to a chair due to his outbursts at not being allowed to have the lawyer he wanted representing him and/or not being allowed to represent himself.

He wouldn’t allow William Kunstler, who was representing the other 7 white defendants, to represent him.

Despite rejecting Kunstler, he and the other 7 defendants, stood solidly behind Seale, with Kunstler telling the judge that the way he was treating Seale was just like a medieval torture chamber.

 

Ultimately the jury acquitted the Chicago 7 of conspiracy. The jury did however find  Hoffman and Rubin, along with 3 others, guilty of traveling across state lines with intent to start a riot. 

 

There were many appeals and different judges to oversee them, so I won’t go through them here except to say that by 1972, all of the criminal convictions were reversed.

 

Wavy Gravy Enters Again

 

I am pretty sure that Wavy Gravy  and the 40-bus Hog Farm caravan, did not participate in the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention protests. I haven’t been able to nail down exactly where the caravan was at the time.

This said, there’s no doubt that their hearts and their beat-up bodies were with the Chicago protesters, particularly the Yippie protesters, and their associate Merry Prankster Paul Krassner.

Wavy got beaten up many times at various Anti-Vietnam War protests.


Click HERE to listen to an Audio Clip from ‘Saint Misbehavin’-The Wavy Gravy movie, where Wavy and his wife Jahanara discuss these beatings and their devastating impacts they had on his health, particularly his back and spine.

Once the Chicago 8 trials began, Hugh Romney organized a fundraiser benefit to help the defendants with their legal costs.

 

The benefit was called The Conspiracy Stomp and it was held on November 28, 1969 at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. 

 

The benefit featured among others, Abbie Hoffman, Paul Krassner, The cast of “Hair” , Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm Bus, and Phil Ochs.

 

As a side note, Hugh Romney received the name Wavy Gravy a month earlier from BB King at a Texas blues festival. The exact story can be found on the internet.

 

I should mention that the poster art for the benefit was done by R. Crumb, the American cartoonist who was a pioneer of the underground ‘comix’ book movement in the 1960s, which included a lot of sexual, bordering on pornographic themes, as well as intentionally shocking pathological and fetishistic content.

He was the founder of Zap Comix,  the first successful underground comix.

Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, and Keep On Truckin’ are the most famous of his characters/creations.

No doubt that R. Crumb would have been thrown in jail for obscenity, had the obscenity trial victories of Lenny Bruce and Allen Ginsberg hadn’t been fought earlier!

There is a 1995 movie about him called simply ‘Crumb’. Not sure I recommend watching it.  You do get a sense of the genius of his graphic art skills, as well as an unapologetic descent into his twisted interior anti-social fantasy world. I should warn you that there is some pretty depressing footage of his family life growing up.

Anyway, Wavy Gravy got R. Crumb to create the poster for this Chicago 8 benefit.

I should mention another R. Crumb famous work of Album cover art: Cheap Thrills (Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company album)

Graham Nash writes and records “Chicago / We Can Change the World” at the urging of Wavy Gravy

 

 

Next up…Woodstock

 

Here’s Wavy Gravy’s famous announcement of feeding breakfast to the 400,000 concert goers.

This was possible due to the Free Kitchen that he and his Hog Farm collective set up, along with the help others. (Note: Wavy Gravy is still Hugh Romney. He wouldn’t be named by BB King as Wavy Gravy for another 2 weeks at a Texas Music Festival)

Click on the image below to watch this iconic video (0:43 minutes)!

Woodstock promoter Michael Lang was only in his 20s, seeing himself as part of the new generation which rejected the old social order.

Lang embraced fresh ideas about civil rights, sexuality and drugs, envisioning Woodstock as much more than a 3-day music concert: it would also be a chance to debunk myths about long-haired hippies, their music and their values.

 

One of the most revolutionary decisions Lang made, was to recruit The Hog Farm:

-To build fire pits and fire trails around the festival grounds,

-To provide food to the concertgoers from the Free Kitchen they set up,

-To helping with aiding victims of who overdosed on drugs,

and most interestingly,

-Being assigned the task of doing security!

Here’s Wavy with Woodstock promoter Michael Lang

 

When Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm Collective stepped off the plane at Kennedy Airport, they were met by the world press.
Wavy Gravy famously said ‘My god, they made us the cops,”

 

Wavy Gravy described his Hog Farm unorthodox security force as the “Please Force” emphasizing non-intrusive tactics at keeping order by gently recommending to unruly concert goers to “please don’t do that, please do this instead”.

 

When a press person asked “What are you going to use for crowd control?’ Wavy Gravy replied ‘Cream pies and seltzer bottles’!

 

Click HERE for another Woodstock Audio clip of Wavy telling concert goers about the ‘Bad Acid’ that was going around!

And the rest, as they say, is history!

Here’s a link to a YouTube documentary about Woodstock ’69.

 

FINALLY….SOME CONCLUSIONS

So let us return to one last episode I was involved in at Camp Winnarainbow

 

One activity I participated in, was a ‘play’ we put on for the participants and staff on the final night there.

 

I forgot the details of what it was exactly we performed. Whether it was an actual play, a skit, improvisation or some dramatic interpretation we put on.

 

Somehow I ended up playing the Greek God PAN in this ‘production’!

 

I don’t know why I was chosen for this role, but there I was, with this wild black wig on my head which looked similar to the snake head of the ancient Goddess Medusa. This wild haired wig went down to my butt!

 

You can Google yourself how history has imagined what the god Pan might have looked like.

 

In his most innocent depictions, he is almost ‘PETER PAN-LIKE’, appearing in imagery and statues as a playful boy-man
playing his PAN-PIPES.

 

 

 

 

As promised earlier, I will make the leap to add the archetypes of the god Pan as well as Peter Pan to our other flute-playing archetypes, Krishna and Kokopelli.

 

 

I should also mention the Greek god Dionysus and his Roman counterpart Bacchus, who were also often depicted as playing a flute-like instrument. I’ll leave it to you to do more reading on Dionysus, Bacchus, and Pan if you feel so inspired.

 

The god Pan, in other more challenging depictions, is portrayed as half-man, half-animal. The animal half typically shown as half-goat, like a mythological Satyrs, having legs and horns of a goat.  (Centaurs in mythology were half-horse). Pan in Greek mythology, was the god of shepherds and hunters, and of the meadows and forests of the mountain wilds. So there was a sexual dimension to Pan, known for chasing Nymphs.

 

Indeed, during the witch hunts of the middle ages, Pan was depicted as the Devil. Although the truth about these ‘witch burning’ times, and what really happened back then, is forever lost due to the Church Inquisitions of the Middle Ages and the prevalent male fears of women’s (and certain men’s) sexual and metaphysical powers. So I believe that Pan got a bad rap!

 

But for whatever reason, here I was playing Pan.

 

I don’t know what I channeled once I stepped onto that stage, but the tornado-like forces that took over my aura for my extremely brief role, scared even me!

 

I was channeling wild dance energies that embodied the forces of the most chaotic tempest winds.

 

It only lasted about a minute, and then I was completely exhausted with no energies left!

 

I did my part in this ‘production’.

 

The next day, we had a closing circle to honor our time together.

 

During this closing circle, back again as the Propeller Beanie Guy, everyone around the circle started POUNDING
the ground and chanted PAN, PAN, PAN, PAN, PAN…..

 

Clearly they loved how I portrayed Pan the night before.

 

But me personally, I was glad to be back to the much more mellow, subdued and New-Age-y ‘Propeller Beanie guy’!

 

There are many other dimensions of Wavy’s Clown Camp, as well as my journey through ‘Tantric Marin, CA’ and  ‘Rave-ing Austin, TX’, that I could expound on, but I feel at this juncture that I’ve provided the main brush-strokes of this amazing, ‘Universe-guided’ journey!

 

I’d like to end this section with a story that happened a few years AFTER I returned to New York. It occurred during, and two days after Woodstock ’99, which was held at the former Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, upstate New York.

I had been doing chair energy-healing massage at these street fairs for a while, and now we were invited to do the same at Woodstock ’99.

Excitedly, we caravanned up to Rome, NY, and for the most part, had pretty consistent healing-massage work over the 3 days.

We had very little to complain about…

…until the 3rd and final night.

Everything was going beautifully at our massage-healing open-air ‘tent’, which had no walls, and was basically completely exposed to the concert goers as they passed by.

 

Until The Red Hot Chilli Peppers took the stage.

 

I had taken a quick break from the massage-healing tent to get a peek at the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s’ performance.

 

What I saw was shocking!

 

Huge fires were blazing in a few parts of the audience.

 

The fires at this point ‘seemed’ to be isolated to a few areas very far from the stage.

 

I thought I could see some vehicle(s) at the center of one of the fires.

 

Flea was playing completely naked, and together with Anthony Kiedis’ raw, powerful, muscular energy, the ‘Pepper’s’ were taking an already ‘on edge’ crowd into Energy-Earthquake-Abandon!

 

At this point, I really didn’t imagine what was about to explode as I walked calmly back to our massage-healing tent.

 

But within minutes THE RIOT EXPLODED!

 

What I later found out after watching the 2021 HBO movie “Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage’ (watch the trailer below), was that while the
fires in the audience were getting more and more out of control,  the Mayor of Rome, NY, Joseph Griffo, come on stage
to personally beg Anthony Kiedis to implore the crowd to back away from the increasingly wild fires so that fire trucks could get in.

 

So what did the Red Hot Chili Peppers do?

 

THEY CHOSE TO DIVE DOWN TO THE LOWEST LEVELS OF IRRESPONSIBILITY AND PLAY JIMI HENDRIX’S SONG FIRE as their encore!

 

Although the HBO movie sites a number of other causes of the riots, mostly stemming from the steady stream of aggressive, toxically masculine bands
who played the preceding 2 evenings, like Limp Biscuit, Kid Rock, Rage Against The Machine, Korn, and Metallica…

 

…the ACTUAL riot exploded with the ‘Pepper’s’ Hendrix song FIRE!

 

Reluctantly, I would encourage you to watch the 2021 HBO movie on Woodstock 1999 to get a sense of the madness and destruction that exploded then.

 

Warning….It isn’t pretty!

 

Click HERE for the trailer for the HBO Documentary of Woodstock 1999: “Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage”

 

 

And there we were, gentle, peaceful massage healers, being surrounded on all sides by the violent, mad crowd!

 

The ‘Test of Faith’ during this RIOT, was for all of us massage healers, under the spiritual guidance of Mr. L, to JUST HAVE FAITH that the rioters, who were smashing everything in their path in and around our no-walls, open-air tent, would magically pass us by with no harm done to us or our chair massage tables.

 

To say that we all considered this A MIRACLE, would be the understatement of the year!

 

I really never appreciated JUST HOW BIG A MIRACLE IT WAS THAT WE WERE COMPLETLEY UNTOUCHED, until I watch this HBO move!

 

We really could have been seriously injured or even killed!

 

Now before we go to the last part of this story…2 days later in Manhattan…

 

…I should mention that I did not know until recently, after watching the HBO movie, that the Red Hot Chili Peppers were the REAL TORCH that lit the out-of-control Riot-Fires that could have killed me and the other peaceful healer-massage souls I was with!

 

SO, with that said…

 

Here’s what happened 2 days after Woodstock 99 in Manhattan…

 

I was working for a company that was connected to my family’s fashion business, and I was out on the street going on
my lunch break.

 

All of a sudden I see Anthony Kiedis (and his girlfriend) walking across the street from where I worked.

 

I am not the type of person to pursue celebrities, having never sought an autograph from anyone in my 30+ years to that date.

 

But I suddenly felt no trepidation running to catch up to this larger-than-life, alternative-rock GOD, Anthony Kiedis.

 

I found out that he was looking to buy an apartment on this very street, and was waiting for a realtor to show it to him.

 

Out of my mind with excitement, I told him how much I loved his performance 2 days before.

 

“You Guys ROCKED!” , I roared at a very exuberant volume!

 

He beamed!

 

Then, the entrepreneurial soul that I am, blurted out that the company I work for prints amazing Native American images on suede leather, and we had just printed one with a Native American Bird design that looked to me very similar to the pretty famous tattoo he had across his back.

 

I told him that I believed the company I worked for would gladly help create
a suede leather jacket for him with this, or a similar, Native American Bird Image on the back.

 

After looking at me askance, not sure how to respond, he finally kindly said, give me your company’s card and I’ll give it to
our drummer. He wears those kinds of suede jackets.

 

And just like that, with the reverence of a Chili Pepper groupie (which I really wasn’t), I appreciatively thanked him for being who he was and for leading his great band.

 

Of course, in the back of my mind I hadn’t forgotten the apocalyptic chaos the ‘Blood-Sugar-Sex-Magic’ boys had lit 2 days earlier.

 

The final chapter to this story came minutes later as I ran wildly up the stairs to my job and stopped the first fellow worker I could find to tell this amazing story to…of meeting the ‘Red Hot Chili Pepper’ himself, across the street 2 days after Woodstock ’99.

 

That’s when I got the lesson!

 

As soon as I told this fellow worker the story…

 

…THE CEILING PLASTER ABOVE US ALONG WITH A HUGE CLOUD OF DEBRIS-DUST, CRACKED AND FELL ON OUR HEADS!

 

The ceiling cracked and fell on us THE SECOND I told the story!

 

Sure, you might be saying, it was ‘just’ a coincidence.

 

But to me, having been getting guidance from the Universe since healing school many years before…THIS WAS NO coincidence!

 

To me this was a LOUD-AND-CLEAR MESSAGE from the Universe!

Some Conclusions (at this point of my life)

 

The LOUD-AND-CLEAR MESSAGE that I believe the Universe was screaming at me as the CEILING PLASTER ABOVE MINE AND MY CO-WORKER’S HEAD CAME CRASHING DOWN ON US, was…

 

I felt that the Universe was saying TO ME, open up as much of the Human Aura through your inner transformations as possible, but you MUST control the powerful energies of the Root and Sacral Chakras, often connected with wild, chaotic, violent states of energy, as well as society-destabilizing, out-of-control sexuality.

 

..I HAD AN EXTRA RESPONSIBILITY to control the wild potentialities of these states of energy.

 

If I had past lives where I lived like Pan, clearly the Universe was guiding me in a different direction..

 

Now I felt I was clearly being guided to master how to CONTAIN WITHIN MYSELF, the powers of a liberated Auric Light Body and Chakras.

 

This state of energetic stillness is obviously very Buddhist or Taoist in it’s teaching.

 

This is the path of meditation to learn how to harness the awesome powers of the human Aura/Energy field within oneself.

 

As for why my spirit guides and the Universe took me on this 4-year Hippy-Yippy, Clown Healing Minister psychedelic journey, culminating at Wavy Gravy’s Clown / Performing Arts Camp?

 

I’m still not 100 percent sure!

 

My current sense is that perhaps in a past life, I was living like a Hippy-Yippy, Clown Healing Psychedelic Minister who perhaps was a bit Pan-like in my behavior.

 

Going from a relatively straight-laced High School Physics Teacher, to having my mind blown at the Scottish Stone Circle, to then being guided on
this kaleidoscopic Southwest/West Coast journey….AND THEN BEING BROUGHT BACK TO THE EAST COAST FOR 26 YEARS for more relatively straight-laced living…

 

…perhaps the Universe just wanted me to GET THE HIPPY/YIPPY OUT OF MY SYSTEM, before revealing a much more internal path of self healing, along with the more self-less service path of offering my healing abilities to people from around the planet.

 

…perhaps I am not destined to be an activist clown like Wavy Gravy in this lifetime.

 

…perhaps the true purpose of this whole 4-year spiritually guided ‘adventure’ has yet to be revealed!

 

But I am truly grateful to have done this deep dive into ‘Everything Wavy Gravy’, if only to have gone deeper into Wavy, Ram Dass,  and Larry and Girija Brilliant’s Organization SEVA !

 

Selfless service to help Humanity!

Setting up my Healing Practice

When my spirit guides were helping me set up my professional healing practice back in 2009,  here were some of their instructions:

 

Give the 1st healing session FREE.

Do only ‘Distance Healings’ instead of in-person healings (by phone or Zoom). The distance creates safe energetic boundaries such that clients won’t get ‘hooked’ on my energy, which can lead to unhealthy co-dependency between healer and client, creating confusing energetic (and potentially physical) attachments.

The other safe-guard that the Universe told me to create, was an age-requirement of 25 years old to be able to get a healing. People under the age of 25 had to have either a parent or legal guardian, or a mature mentor to do the healing first, and then be the younger person’s support. Check my website for the different pre-25 instructions which change with each age group.

 

I need to be a great listener in my sessions with clients.

 

When first meeting healing clients (phone/zoom) I need to express almost no personality so as to be a blank canvass upon which my new client can share themselves,

 

I am ‘allowed’ to be a bit more kooky, or clownish with certain healing clients over time if my expressing or sharing more of myself is useful in some way for my client’s healing journey .

When dealing with non-client people in my daily life, I have been guided to NOT express myself very much, saying very little if anything about my healing abilities or practice (unless it somehow comes out in conversation without me pushing it).

 

I was to become quiet…reserved….almost invisible, when interacting with every-day people.

So that’s my Southwest/Western story that blew my mind virtually every day for 4 years!  Hope you enjoyed it!

 

Alas, these miracle-days soon dragged to a virtual halt, as the Universe brought me back to ‘ordinary reality’,  to the New York Metropolitan reality, to now train me anew to be a ‘healer for the masses’.

 

To do this, I had to SLOW DOWN! Pay my dues working odd jobs. Grueling physical jobs. Connect with ‘ordinary folk’.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Click HERE to go to the next story…