hi, Tanemon, you asked what made me 'a tough coconut.'

well, I was a huge skeptic in all things 'spiritual' and I didn't believe in god, necessarily. I thought gurus were charlatans and scam artists, and that people in general were interested in religion or spiritual stuff as a crutch, because they were weak and couldn't get their lives together. *grinning* seriously -- I was a very uninterested person to hook up with a guru of any kind.

I'd been burned by organized religion in interesting ways, and was hugely judgmental, suspicious, angry, with an over-active mind that wanted to pick everything apart and analyze it all rationally, and find whatever holes were there in the theory, the belief, the system.

I was raised by scientific parents -- dad was a surgeon, mom was a nurse -- who were at best agnostic and had a horror of organized religions in general and some specific ones for specific reasons.

born and raised in hard-headed no bullshit farming country in Missouri - the 'show me state'! -- I was stubborn as a Missouri mule and my stance about all things woo-woo was really, "you've got to show me, otherwise no way am I going to believe a word you're saying is true."

stuff like that. I just wasn't starry-eyed, or credulous, or ready to swallow any spiritual anything at all unless it was demonstrated to me that it really works, that it's at all real.

what made me this way? I would have to say, honestly, huge heartbreak. heartbreak with god, heartbreak with life, extreme trauma as a young person and teenager -- a kind of being ostracized at every turn for being 'different', and an extreme resignation to just surviving whatever I'd suffered in my life.

I think heartbreak, on an epic and continual scale, wore down my inner brightness and left me suspicious, untrusting, cynical, skeptical, doubting and depressed. and incredibly fearful.

you asked what I had declined to explore or accept, before......

oh, let's see -- despite many invitations, I refused to move to California because I thought it was populated by nuts and lunatics, a lot of New Agey hocus-pocus cult-following, nuts and flakes granola people waving crystals around and chanting "Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo"......

so -- on the list of stuff I rejected was crystals, channels, psychics, holistic healing, vegetarianism, meditation (kind of)... really, anything 'spiritual' or that referred to energy. *grinning*

the first time I ate Indian food, in New York City, when I was 17 years old, I had a massive anxiety attack -- I mean, epic. huge. the room was spinning, the scents from the kitchen (even before the meal showed up) was freaking me out, I was nauseated, stomach churning, I thought I was going to pass out.

so anything that had to do with India was pretty much on my list of Avoidance Items as well.

it's a total cosmic joke on me, I'd have to say.

all of this carefully got worn down by living in California and realizing, bit by bit, that some things were for real. acupuncture worked, for example, and so did the herbs prescribed by Chinese doctors..... meditation wasn't all bad and I developed a taste for Indian food... the first time I did yoga with a friend, I had an enlightenment experience in Shavasana..... that kinda freaked me out.... trauma and anxiety (and post-traumatic stress disorder from my youth) led me to 12-step programs, where I found a real sense of a spiritual inkling of possibility (even though I was still agnostic and wouldn't say the word "god" for years!)......

then I moved to Northern California and somewhere in the midst of all that, started reading books on yogic spirituality, and I met Jack Schwarz, a Western yogi who'd gotten enlightened at Auschwitz and had supernatural abilities..... and he started teaching me even though I couldn't exactly figure out why I was his student.... I didn't go looking for a teacher, I guess the right one for me just appeared....

somewhere in there, I started meditating in a Zen center. I think that saved my life, actually.... at the time I just knew I needed it..... but then I started having experiences there, too.......

and then Reiki really blew my mind and heart open. I'd been a kind of inadvertent, accidental healer -- I'd do massage for people and their whole emotional body would release and all kinds of healings and cathartic stuff would happen... but Reiki escalated that, so I was really happy to practice as a Reiki healer.

it wasn't very long after all that had unwound that I met Sri Kaleshwar in 1999 and had supernatural experiences the first time I heard his name -- so..... a lot of steps this way and that way, melting a lot of my belief systems, healing my heart, smoothing out the traumas... and giving glimpses of the divine along the whole journey.

to say it's been a wild ride would be the understatement of the century.

Alx