Ordinariness.\u00a0 John-Roger talks about the virtues of ordinariness in seminars as we all seek to expand our awareness of Spirit.\u00a0 In my experience J-R always seemed to like being around people who related to him as an ordinary guy.\u00a0 He told me once early on that people are always going to want to put him up on a pedestal and he said that he was going to jump down just as fast as he could.\u00a0 He wanted to be related to as an ordinary guy.\u00a0 He just wanted to be one of the guys.\u00a0 This was true for how he related to both men and women.<\/p>\n
One weekend day many years ago, I volunteered to be part of an outdoor work party up at J-R’s house in Mandeville Canyon.\u00a0 There were five or six of us guys who were young and strong and were willing to do some manual labor up at his house.\u00a0 I did it just because I loved him and enjoyed being outdoors in the country and saw this as an opportunity to flex my muscles and relate to the other guys, joking and laughing and generally having a good time.\u00a0 After a couple of hours of this, someone from the house poked their head out the door and called out that sandwiches had been made for us and to come into the kitchen.\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 This was unexpected.\u00a0 We were just up there for a good time and did not expect anyone to feed us.\u00a0 A nice bonus.\u00a0 We all sat down at the kitchen table, enjoying our sandwiches and each other when all of a sudden, J-R walked into the kitchen to join us.\u00a0 Fantastic.\u00a0 He sat down with us at the table and just became one of us, one of the guys.\u00a0 We continued to joke and talk and included J-R as just one more guy to joke and talk to.\u00a0 It all seemed very natural.<\/p>\n
Now, one of the guys that was part of our work party was someone that I had never seen before.\u00a0 I had never met him up until that day.\u00a0 So he was a new guy to MSIA, which was fine with us.\u00a0 We welcomed new people all the time and he seemed to fit right in.\u00a0 As we were finishing up our sandwiches and getting ready to go back outside, this new guy got up and walked around the table to where J-R was sitting.\u00a0 He kind of leaned over to look J-R square in his face and said to him, “Are you a master?”\u00a0 The way that he asked this was face to face in a direct, almost confrontational tone of voice.\u00a0 The rest of us guys quickly glanced at each other, unsure of the situation.\u00a0 However J-R chuckled, looked directly at him and said, “I’m just a babe in the woods.”\u00a0 The rest of us just laughed, but in my own inner workings with Spirit, I concluded that what J-R had said in answer to the question is exactly what The Master would say.\u00a0 “I’m just a babe in the woods.”<\/p>\n
Now strangely, I only saw this new guy one more time, and then never saw him again after that day.<\/p>\n
Lee Clausen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ordinariness.\u00a0 John-Roger talks about the virtues of ordinariness in seminars as we all seek to expand our awareness of Spirit.\u00a0 In my experience J-R always seemed to like being around people who related to him as an ordinary guy.\u00a0 He told me once early on that people are always going to want to put him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":109116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[266,257],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-ndh-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}