I was a college senior taking a mysticism class. Our daily homework was to do 15 minutes of meditation and journal about it. We could choose the form of meditation. After researching and trying different chants and modes of meditation, I chose to chant the name “God.” Day after day I’d chant “God” in our college chapel or under a big willow tree.
One afternoon while chanting in the chapel with my eyes closed, a beautiful presence appeared. In surprise I shot open my eyes, only to see nothing there but the chapel. I closed my eyes and pop! There was the presence. I didn’t move, hardly wanted to breathe so that I could stay with this amazing, all encompassing loving and knowing being. After who knows how long, I finally opened my eyes as that was all I could take then. I knew this energy/one was what/who I had been looking for.
I talked to my professor asking her if she had had this experience; she told me to continue on. I read lots of books, but couldn’t find exactly what I’d experienced. Eventually I put the experience on my inner shelf for 9 years while I moved into my life of getting married having children and exploring my Catholic teachings, especially the Catholic Mystics. 9 years later, the impulse to connect with that earlier experience of that wondrous presence re-inserted itself. I was now in earnest, on a mission to find that presence here.
I was pulled to check out many different movements / paths to find that one, that beautiful presence who accepted me just as I am. One day I attended a Rolfing demonstration given by a young man. During his presentation, I heard a voice whisper in my right ear: “Ask him if he does meditation.” I looked to the people on either side of me: “Did you hear that voice say something about meditation?” They hadn’t heard anything and thought I was a little crazy. On the break I went up to the Rolfer and asked him if he did meditation and was he part of a group? He said “yes.” So I said “ok I’ll have one of these sessions and when I come, please tell me about the group and meditation.”
I went for my Rolfing session and, as we started, the Rolfer asked me if I’d mind having some music on. I was happy for music and he put on a tape of songs that started with a man’s voice introducing these Songs of a Loving Heart. At the first sound of the voice of the man doing the introduction, I jumped up on the Rolfing table in instant recognition. “Who is that man?,” I asked excitedly. “John-Roger” the Rolfer said. “At last” I told him, “that is the one, the Presence I have been looking for.” The Rolfer asked me how I knew, and I told him that I didn’t know for sure, only that the feel or vibration was the same as the presence I had met nine years ago in my college meditation. The Rolfer gave me his back copies of MSIA’s Movement Newspaper and a form to subscribe to Soul Awareness Discourses, and thus began my formal studying with the Traveler.
A while later, I saw John-Roger in person at an Insight training. I went up to him and touched his arm in different places as if trying to understand his physicality. He smiled at me and said, “Yes, flesh and blood.” I said: “But you don’t look like that on the other side.” And he responded “that’s right cuz this is flesh and blood.” J-R, the Traveler, gave me a precious blessing of meeting him inwardly first, and that one is still with me and even more.
