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My Life with the Traveler

My Life with the Traveler
by Genie Ford

Genie received the Lifetime Service Award at MSIA’s 2016 Conference

I was looking for a teacher, and I knew it. I grew up in Texas in a large family in the Depression. My mother was a Bible-quoting person—for everything. It was interesting, though, that I don’t think she had any fun. I was the fourth of nine children and I taught Sunday school in a Baptist Church. But it didn’t fill that part of me that felt close to God. What I knew from God wasn’t in the Bible.

My personal experience is what carried me through—not what my mother was always quoting. My father just lived the teachings. I can’t recall him ever going to church. But he came from one of the first families of Texas. My mother came from a very fine family as well. It’s kind of sad to see a woman who came from a very prominent family but was never happy. So I made my own fun. I was not unhappy, although I was often criticized for the way I expressed myself. But all of that has all just melted into the nothingness of growing up. Service to me becomes standing as a facilitator and creating a safe space for me and people around me. And taking care of myself and others. I keep reminding myself of the admonition of Jesus the Christ. He said “If you do it to the least of these you did it to me.” I am now resolved that my actions must produce loving, joy and caring. I have been steadfast.

I went to the Unity Church, I went to the Church of Religious Science, and none of that touched to me or spoke to me about the love of God. Then I met John-Roger for the first time at an art gallery in Whittier, CA in 1967. I went with a friend and didn’t know there was going to be a guest speaker. The most important thing l will emphasize here is that loving is the key. Our ego or personality have little or no role to play serving others. The great ministry starts with getting the Traveler’s teachings grounded in us, because all we do as ministers in the church of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness is predicated on the teachings. Be an example. Be loving. Be caring. Be there for yourself and others.

I said to the person I came with, “Can you see the stage?” She said, “Yes.” For me it was just a blob of white. That’s all I could see. I couldn’t even see a figure on the stage. Just a bright light. As soon as he was finished with the seminar I went up to him and I said, “Do you have classes? Because you know things I’m looking for.” He said, “No, I teach high school.” (There wasn’t even an MSIA at that time.) I said, “If you ever…” and he said, “I teach high school, and I counsel with the students.” And I said, “Well, my son just graduated from high school, would you counsel with him?” And J-R gave him a light study.

It was such a special time, because when people connected to the words that J-R put out, they moved out here to be with him, and made all sorts of changes in their lives. He had such devotees, people who were so hungry for the teachings. People would fill several rooms in a house at seminars. J-R told me that he had been my teacher in the lifetime before this one, and I had an unconscious recognition of that. I had really been looking for him. I didn’t miss a single one of his seminars, and I would travel many miles to see him.

I did audio and video seminars every week at my home. People came from near and far. I’m still in touch with some of them. People would sit everywhere, all over the floor, all of them absorbing what J-R was here to give. It was wonderful because I knew that I had finally touched in to who God was and what God meant to me. It’s beyond words.

Once there was another spiritual teacher appearing at a conference in Santa Monica. J-R asked me if I was going to see him. I said, “No, he’s not my teacher. You’re my teacher.” J-R just shook his head. I wasn’t mixing up what I had with something else. I think Spirit kept me very close because I’d been studying Spirit in other lifetimes and never made it.

J-R told me that in another lifetime I was a man in a spiritual school where you had to study for a certain period of time before you could take a break. Before I graduated I went “on leave,” but I was on a vow of silence. My father owned a shipping fleet and I went out on one of the boats for my holiday away. I was standing on the deck of this ship and my foot was caught in the anchor rope, so when they threw the anchor overboard they threw me overboard too. I screamed, and when I got back to shore I didn’t tell anyone because that would be an admission that I did talk.

I helped duplicate discourses in the early days. Working with J-R—there was nothing like it. I knew the truth was coming through him. I never dreamed I would ever touch to God in the way that J-R opened my awareness. That part of me that had memories from another lifetime resurfaced, not to where I could put times and dates on it, but I knew he was speaking the truth. J-R had no againstness toward anyone, even people who would get angry with him or who would leave the organization. I don’t have many stories about J-R. It’s funny but they’re sort of taken away from you so you don’t spread just stories. It’s the experience that’s important.


Read the complete NDH September / October 2016 Edition via ISSUU


2 thoughts on “My Life with the Traveler”

  1. Oh yes, Genie. I loved your story of your family and then, of course, your friendship with JR. Thanks so much for writing about it. I miss him and feel so lucky to have had him as my teacher. love and light to you .
    Gerda Paumgarten.

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