05/09/2025
My journey into meditation, service, and study of the Ageless Wisdom began in earnest when my wife suffered a near fatal cerebral hemorrhage in November 2020. At that time I returned to meditation and began journaling to cope with a world that became completely upended. I explored meditation a bit in my late teens and early twenties, mainly in conjunction with psychedelics in attempting to have a visionary or otherworldly experience. I had a less than ideal childhood and looking back I was attempting to escape a reality that I was completely disillusioned with and to find validation in an existence I felt to be meaningless.
I never found any answers or deep insights, nor did I see any visions; I did however gain the ability to still my mind and remain concentrated for long periods of time. Never achieving my goal of having an experience that transcended this reality I lost interest in this endeavor. From there I embarked on a relentless pursuit of intoxication and self-destruction that culminated in a nearly and what should have been a successful attempt to end this physical incarnation in December of 2010.
During my long road to recovery I felt loved and appreciated for the first time in my adult life. I felt inspired again and began rebuilding a new life for myself. I discovered yoga in the rehabilitation center and I enrolled for a term at the community college after dropping out of school in the eighth grade. I also reconnected with my lapidary hobby and set out to make a career of it, thinking that my body could no longer handle the rigors of going back to working a job in construction.
In the spring of 2012 I met my wife, Gabrielle. I contacted her store in search of sculptural stone and we developed an immediate rapport. That summer I had some free time and I offered to deliver some carvings I had done for one of her clients. I never left. She was finalizing a contentious divorce and was in great financial difficulty so our imbalance of resources was never an issue. As we entered into the winter season where there was little tourist traffic to support the store and we needed to get creative with finding sources of income so we began offering our lapidary services to the newly forming art and jewelry design community on Facebook. This part of our business quickly grew and by the spring of 2016 we closed the retail store to focus exclusively on our online clientele.
As our business continued to boom Gabby became more and more concerned with the economic disparity in our world. We were by no means wealthy but we were well above our daily expenses. She spoke again and again about how she thought that everyone deserved to live as good of a lifestyle as we did and she wanted to do something about it, to find some way to be of service. This didn’t interest me in the way that it inspired her but I didn’t want to take away from her dreams. Enjoying our success with business I wanted to expand and perpetuate it as a way to finance her dream of helping others. Then her stroke hit.
I immediately began writing updates for our Facebook community about her progress and my management of affairs. At the time we had more than a hundred open orders as well as easily over two dozen paid orders awaiting shipping. I felt a deep obligation to our clientele, many of whom had become good friends over the years, to fulfill what we had promised to do. Adding to the complexity of the situation, our roles in the business were very defined and reflected our personal strengths. She cut and polished the stones while I ran the business.
Shortly into this process one of our clients took the initiative to establish a fundraiser for our family. I initially balked heavily at the idea. I took great pride in my self-reliance and the accomplishment of taking myself from being basically penniless to operating the largest stone cabochon business on Facebook at that time. After acquiescing to this plan I came to the realization that if I was to deny the assistance we were offered I would be depriving others an opportunity to be of service.
The level of support we received was phenomenal. We had complete strangers reaching out to us with gifts and words of encouragement. I was quite humbled and overwhelmed by this experience. I felt that my words of gratitude and stories of our progress were not enough and in a way I felt indebted to the universe for the blessings we had received. This is where I developed a compulsion to be of service.
Most every evening we watched videos on YouTube together. Our favorite topics were Ancient Egypt and anything that debunked the official narratives of civilization being only 6000 years old. Plasma cosmology and the electrical nature of the universe were also explored as well as the nature of human consciousness. The concept of the brain being a receiver and transmitter rather than the origin of consciousness fascinated the both of us and in the quiet time I now spent alone this concept gave me hope and solace. I delved deeper into the offerings of various theosophical organizations eventually encountering the Lucis Trust.
The extensive body of the Alice Bailey literature covered on their website along with their avenues for world service deeply resonated with me so I explored further. It was (and is) the only spiritual system that has felt valid to me so I took to it like a parched man stranded in the desert encountering an oasis. I followed their meditation diagrams and started learning about the difference between my soul and personality. As I progressed further I began attempting to bring my soul and personality into alignment as I worked to have my desire to be of service govern my thoughts, words, and actions. This was a confusing and often bewildering process, I stepped away a few times in frustration at my apparent lack of progress, but I kept returning.
As I continued in my meditations I began to separate off thoughts about past mistakes and worries about the future. Instead of just silencing the mind I listened for insights about the bigger picture and what I could do to support the plan for human evolution. I received the mantra “See the world renewed again with love” and I let it guide my thoughts, words, and actions. The times I fall short I return to these words and try to make better choices next time.
Following this path I was instructed, while in meditation, that I needed to quit smoking cannabis if I wished to progress any further. I meditated upon this frequently and deeply, receiving the insights that I could not be effective in group work if I continued to smoke. That I should not give up on meditation if I was unwilling to quit, and that I could pick up where I left off in my next incarnation if I did not. Wanting to have my cake and eat it too, I fought a battle between my higher and lower selves over this, sometimes stepping away from my practice in frustration and self-criticism, but I kept coming back. I went back and forth on this for almost two years before my desire to be of service won out over my selfish self-indulgence.
Being cannabis free brought about a level of mental clarity that I had no idea I was missing. While it in no way impeded the quality and output of my work with the business, deliberately inhaling smoke, especially from burning paper, was not the healthiest of habits. It wasted time similar to that of a to***co addiction and likely sapped my stamina for Hatha Yoga and other exercise. Almost immediately I experienced an intensification of my sleeping dreams. Sharing this development a friend told me of how her widowed partner had recently quit as well and that his late wife had much difficulty in contacting him in his dreams while he was smoking and after he quit that difficulty was abated. My (step)son says that I act a lot happier and my yoga instructor says that I look healthier with a brighter complexion. My day to day thinking has changed as well, I have far less angry or violent thoughts that I would often distance myself from through smoking. I am in no way opposed to its medical or recreational use, I even keep some in my untouched liquor cabinet for guests to enjoy, I just have no desire for any mind altering substances at this stage of my life.
Being ready to take the next step I enquired in a Facebook group dedicated to the teachings of Alice Bailey, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and Helena Roerich about how the instruction I would receive in the Arcane School would differ from that of Morya Federation. Through that conversation I learned of other meditation schools including Meditation Mount, The School For Esoteric Studies, Sundial House, as well as the Twelves Group. While researching the Twelves Group one of their coordinators reached out to me and we struck up a conversation.
During our conversation I shared the following excerpt from my journal dated August 6, 2024. This was written before I became aware of Twelves. We both agreed that the parallels and synchronicities were too much to ignore and I decided to explore this path further.
~~ Yesterday I turned 48 years of age. Like my 45th it feels like a transition point but more so because of the number 12. As a child I was fascinated by this number and all of the fluid ways it flowed through our rigid base 10 system. Could I be at the halfway point of a long life? ⅔ of a 3 score and 12? Or am I at the ¾ point of this physical journey with my dream coming true where I was told that “You have nothing to worry about, you have 30 more years.” When I was a child I thought about what it would be like to be the age of my grandparents and how I could avoid becoming a “boring adult” once I passed the age of 50. I imagine I’ll be reflecting on that birthday as well, maybe I’ll have a picture taken of me doing a handstand in defiance of it 🙂
Lately I have been reflecting on life, my own mortality, how I fit into the greater picture, what is the point of all of this, and what do I do now? I have zero interest in America’s popular materialist consumer culture and I have no desire to perpetuate it. I have lost all faith in our governing and religious institutions so I give them no energy as I see them as no longer beneficial to humanity. Since Gabby’s stroke my thoughts and motives have shifted away from what I can do to make myself more successful to what I can do for the greater good. I recently became aware of the concept of “divine discontent” and I think this most accurately describes what I’ve been feeling.
What can I do for the greater good; in what way can I be of service? The short answer, for me anyway, is making the most of the time I have here and living my life in such a way that I can look in a mirror and not wish to strike in furious anger at the person before me. Does meditating upon and envisioning a better tomorrow actually actually make a difference or am I just deluding myself and wasting what precious time that I have left in this physical body? Can my soul’s desire change the whole paradigm or is it more effective going around putting band-aids on the symptoms of a greater problem? ~~
If my story intrigues or inspires you please reach out to me, I’m happy to discuss this further. If the concepts of Christ Consciousness, Esoteric Christianity, Buddhism, White Magic, and World Service appeal to you the Lucis Trust website has extensive information and free access to read the 24 Alice Bailey books. https://www.lucistrust.org/
If you are already on this path and wish to join me in esoteric meditation and service, please check out Twelves. https://twelvestar.org/
