seventeen

When I was 17.

I had always been spiritually precocious. I’d grown up wanting to be a monk or priest in the Catholic Church. I was not raised catholic. I raised myself catholic. I was never baptized. Never confirmed. And I hated my catholic mother for it.

Around 16 I began taking the RCIA (Rights of Christian initiation for adults.) so that I could receive baptism. Around the end of it I began having difficult logical inconsistencies that I couldn’t abide. The priest couldn’t adequately answer them. These were:

1. God is all.
2. We are god.
3. There is hell.
4. Hell is the absence of god.

Further, an ALL LOVING GOD created hell? What? And sends his creation there? No. This cannot. So I left.

I perused my aunt’s bookshelves (family member with whom I’m closest. Aunt by marriage. She’s half Inca and half Aztec. Beautiful. Shamanic. Spiritual.) Many books of many religions were on her shelves. For the first time I was seeing the views of different cultures, religions, and times. (You must know, I’m from Bliss, Idaho. Population 300. Allll white. Alllllll Mormon.).

I came across To Live the Life by Abdul Baha of the Baha’i faith. And I was like “OMG! ANOTHER RELIGION HAS TRUTH! Holy fucking. Shit.”

My mind was blown. I started reading religious information, texts, etc. voraciously. I became Baha’i.

Landing on my aunt’s shelf, I saw a copy of The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Chopra, who, I am embarrassed to admit, gave me my first satori.

I read his book with vigor, alacrity, and greed. Again and again until I could nearly recite it by memory. But what it taught me had silenced the storm within. And opened the profound silence. I would, daily, walk meditatively along the Snake River allowing the stillness and silence of the valley, river, and beauty fill my being until I felt such connection and that it WAS ALL ME, I was that.

And then, in bliss, in Bliss I resided. Became vegetarian. Started meditation daily. Daily yoga. Was declared as going to hell by all the Mormons (I hadn’t even come out as gay yet!) Took very special meditation classes from a special man trained in clairvoyance in Berkeley. I was his youngest and most advanced student. I was awakened from that day I sat on my meditation rock overlooking the river and felt that river in my blood. Felt the sky in my mind. Felt the valley as my body.

That’s what happened when I was 17. It was a moment of grace. Nothing I was looking for. Trying for. Searching for. But something that was allowed. And then bloomed.