Whenever someone asks me lately how I am, in keeping with my optimistic realist mindset I usually respond with “so far, so good – but it’s still early, and there’s plenty of time for that all to change!” Well, in terms of my own “spiritual journey” it is indeed “early.” However, I don’t know if there is more time for “change” to happen for me or not. We aren’t guaranteed any particular amount of time in this lifetime we’re experiencing. We may not have as much time as we think we have to make the changes we’d like – or need – to make on our spiritual journeys. I believe that when the opportunity for change comes, we can benefit from embracing it, experiencing it, and learning from it. Then we pass that learning on to others when they ask us for it. And so it is with the Nine Principles of Spiritual Recovery information: I’ve had the opportunities to change and grow over the years, embraced them – if sometimes reluctantly – learned from them, and taken the opportunities to share what I’ve learned with other people who ask for the teaching…and as I’ve learned, “asking” comes in many forms.
As I have made my study of personal spirituality, especially over the past decade, I’ve come to understand that one’s thoughts and feelings about “spiritual messengers” has a great deal to do with one’s acceptance of the “spiritual message.” This format of information delivery affords the source a degree of anonymity, but people who know me know that anonymity is not really my style – or strong suit. As I have sought to develop humility, I’ve been taught that accepting credit is a form of humility so long as one understands that most of what one does comes from the gifts one has been given. I’ve also been taught that accepting responsibility – even blame – for what one says or does is also essential to developing humility. So before I begin sharing the Nine Principles of Spiritual Recovery information, I want to take some time to describe my own spiritual journey and the path I’ve taken – or down which Spirit has taken me – and what I believe my purpose or spiritual mission to be at this point in my life. Then you can decide whether or not to accept both the message and this, I hope, humble messenger.
Religion has been an important part of my family’s history. My family’s roots in colonial America begin with my first ancestor to come to North America, the Rev. Stephen Bachiler, who came here for religious freedom. He was an English Puritan pastor and a contemporary of Massachusetts Bay colony’s governor, John Winthrop. Rev. Bachiler was a “separatist” – a proponent of the separation of church and government, an Oxford graduate and a fairly old man (in his 70’s) by the time he came to Massachusetts Bay in 1632. He brought his daughter Ann, who had married a John (or James) Samborne in England but had died there and left her with three sons. Rev. Bachiler was apparently not “puritan” enough for the governor and his cronies and kept getting driven out of towns in the colony. Eventually, he led several families north and founded a settlement in what is now Hampton, New Hampshire in 1639. He was persecuted by the Puritan authorities for many years, even being accused of trying to seduce a neighbor when the old man was well into his 80’s. Before his death sometime around 1656, he and his grandson Stephen returned to England. Rev. Bachiler is buried at All Hallows Staining in London.
My own spiritual path began when I was very young, although I didn’t know that at the time. My father was an avowed atheist (which changed before he passed to Spirit three years ago) and my mother was an agnostic (I guess) who never attended church but who used to watch faith-healer Oral Roberts on television every Sunday. I remember thinking back then that this man asking people for money to build a college, and saying God was telling him to do it and if he didn’t get it done God was going to “call him home” (to me, kill him) wasn’t right. My mother tried sending my sister and me to Baptist Sunday school, but I didn’t like it at all. I guess she thought we’d get something out of it, although she chose not to attend, for some reason not known to me. I thought the people I went to church with were hypocrites (I didn’t know that word then) because their behavior toward me was different on Sunday than on any other day of the week. I remember my Sunday school teacher, who was also a regular schoolteacher, once talking to us about swear-words like “Goddamn” and how people who used those kinds of words were bad people. So, she pretty much told me my whole family was “bad.” My mother would give us each two quarters for the collection – we’d each put one in the collection and use the other for candy on the way home. I remember finally begging off going, claiming I had no clean underwear. My mother turned our apartment upside down looking for some clean drawers that Sunday but eventually gave up and didn’t make us go anymore. Thank God. My mother’s father, who didn’t go to church and never talked about religion, used to watch all the TV preachers every week. Of course, he also watched professional wrestling every week, too. I spent a lot of time with my grandfather since my grandparents always lived close to us, and so I watched these preachers with him – Jim Baker, Jimmy Swaggert, Billy Graham – all the greats of that time. I loved it when they cried. It was the equivalent of watching one of the wrestlers bleed. My last childhood memory related to religion is the time I was lighting matches walking to school and started a grassfire near a church by my school. I didn’t realize it had happened until my second grade teacher, an angry old woman who I detested – hated, really – mentioned one day what had happened – I think she went to that church – and she seemed to know that I was the one who was responsible. Maybe it was just my omnipresent guilty conscience. I felt the wrath of God in her stare, let me tell you, but I also remember feeling relieved that no one knew for sure it was my fault.
Fast-forward to about the time I got married and my children were born. I was in my mid-20’s and having kids made something change for me. I started thinking maybe there was something to faith and religion, and I began to feel an affinity for Christianity. I’m not sure it was about me, but I guess, like my mother, I wanted my children to have a religious background, just in case. So, that was the reason she sent us. My wife and I didn’t attend church regularly, and only took the girls to Easter service one time. They didn’t seem to care for it, and neither did I. I didn’t attend a church service again until I was in my early 40’s. That was when I was led to a Spiritualist church. And when everything changed for me.
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My Spiritual Journey – Spiritualism, the New Age, and the Old Age
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