Now you might think that prayer is a bit ‘out there’ and yet it seemed the perfect place for me at the time. I was orphaned at birth with no knowledge of my biologicals to date, though I was adopted by a wonderful couple who encouraged and inspired my curiosity about life. I’m sure I was a real challenge for them as I grew up, being both curious and mischievous as a youth.

Despite having a lot of friends and playmates, I spent a lot of time alone in the woods nearby, totally satiated by Nature. I enjoyed life immensely, yet still had an ache in my heart for true companionship with others in a deepened sense of joy in life and nature. Kids don’t seem to have the desire or opportunity for such activities today. My tenure teaching high school for nearly a decade in a variety of environments edified that assertion.

I still feel that way and take great steps to acknowledge it in conversation and now in a leadership role for a global peace movement founded to address aggression in many forms, allowed by existing laws. Can we actually create a free society, able to adjust and ascend from harmful activities toward one another that keeps us afraid, angry, ignorant, and immobile?

I love that many have joined in such efforts, raising their voice and creating opportunities to elevate the playing field in the last half-century or so. The ‘fringe’ thinkers are not so fringe anymore. The Boomers are awakening, too, as their lives are progressing with the realization that there really is more to life than work and retirement in some ‘relaxed’ state of being. The pandemic precipitated many an ‘awakening’ through self-examination during their sequestration.

Along with my quest in the outer world was a developing reality inside throughout my life, too. Shortly after my sister (also adopted) arrived a few months after my 4th birthday, my parents told me about being adopted. It sent me deep inside with questions that I never asked of them until much later in life.

As a child, innocent and naive, I took the parental quest a bit further. ‘Do I have a father and mother in heaven and can I talk to them?’ My early Sunday school teachings led me to believe it was possible. Somehow, a ‘voice’ arrived one night standing in front of the window that looked out over our front porch.

My elbows on the windowsill, hands clasped with my chin resting on them and just gazing out the window I was startled by a male voice entering my head. It came with a simple, “HEY YOU!” to which I immediately spun around and asked my mother, who was sitting about 20 feet away watching TV, if she had heard the voice. “No, I didn’t. Must’ve been a peeping Tom,” was her response. I kept my mouth shut for over a decade in regard to my inner life, accepting it as real for me.

I did learn to communicate with [it] over the next few months, standing in front of windows at night, unable to see out, and projecting the voice out as I had heard it. I thought if I did, it might answer back. Looking back years later, it was when I became completely silent, and empty, that it responded. I couldn’t ‘think’ and ‘listen’ at the same time. I learned how to ‘meditate’ in those moments without even realizing it.

Trials, Tribulations, Travails

I eventually entered the Pre-Med program at Ball State University, testing out of 5 quarters of general education requirements. I did okay in my first quarter, with 17 credit hours, though I only had a 3.33 GPA at its end. The second quarter started off with a heartbreak I’m sure many have felt. I’d ‘broken up’ with my high school sweetheart before going off to college.

I returned home and went to restore our relationship with the intention of asking her to marry me. She was already married. I was devastated. I returned to school bereft and empty. I decided to dig deep and inquire about my life’s purpose as I felt that was the best effort I could make at the time and hopefully rise to the occasion. I returned to my core with a hope and a prayer. literally.

On my first night back in the honors dorm I hit my knees and prayed, “Father, I want to know the truth and I’m willing to die for it if necessary.” That was it. I felt it from the depths of my being, an extension of what I’d held inside for nearly a decade already. I really wasn’t prepared, or perhaps I was, for what was about to happen. Be careful what you ask.

Possibilities to Coagulate

What do you do when something profound and impactful happens in your life? Do you dig deeper into its truth, or keep it at a distance for future reference or reflection? After nearly 50 years, both apply for me. It’s been excruciatingly fun, joy that comes from evolving through the trials and tribulations.

How much of our lives and reality is scripted in a malleable plan beyond our awareness? Can things show up that really do bridge worlds in ways that affect a worldview, or even a world itself? Is there a progression of evolution, by design and begging to be discovered that we, in our limited understanding, dismiss?

In a life of discovery, can we expand our horizons? With all of the indicators of humanity being challenged to evolve toward harmony, from awareness of cosmology to zoology, how do we move beyond limitations from ‘thinking’ to increasing our ‘sensitivity’ to the subtle energy of the consciousness evolving with us now?

Is it possible we really are all connected, as the Vedas indicate, and we’re navigating a new living awareness in preparation for the ‘Age of Aquarius’ and a fulfillment of ancient prophecies? Amidst the din of our collective concerns for sustainability and survival, is there more we haven’t considered that is being offered through our natural urge to merge, to love, and be loved?

Might we find the ask, a prayer, for the best in ourselves? The answers, imho, will literally change the world for the better in our lifetime. It seems everything, other than us, is prepared and ready.