Putting this here to have a record to jog my memory later when it comes up as a fb memory, since I don’t often think about the past, but the past intruded yesterday, and the connections are interesting. One of the neatest things about working with Leonard Orr was all the famous people I got to meet. Usually very pleasant meetings, though I do remember that one time when someone who had pioneered a “new” form of Rebirthing-Breathwork met with Leonard to explain their method and said, “I hope we can work together”, to which Leonard replied, “The biggest problem I have is keeping people from f___king up the process.” LOL. So that was a little unpleasant and tense, but that was the only time anything like that happened. More pleasant examples were: that time we all went to the Gesundheit! Institute and I got to meet Patch Adams. This was before Robin Williams made the movie about him. Patch himself gave us a tour of the facility (lots of Yurts), and I gave him and some of his staff Rebirthing sessions. This was when they were in Appalachia, providing free medical care to everyone. They were all completely burned out. So Leonard and me and three other Rebirthers stayed there two days giving back to back sessions to all the staff members. It was nice giving back to givers. One odd thing was this one building which had a solid wooden roof with the 2X4s nailed face to face, rather than side by side. So the ceiling was the edges of the 2X4s. So it was a huge amount of lumber. I was just about to ask Patch why it was built that way, when he launched into a 30 minute speech on the failures of modern medicine and insurance, and when he was done, I’d forgotten my question completely! Later, it didn’t seem important.
There was also a kind of humorous meeting with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, she of “On Death and Dying” and the Five Stages of Grief fame, in which Leonard tried to convince her that death was optional. She sat there stone faced while Leonard went through his argument for physical immortality and at the end just said, “Well, I’ll think about it.” Leonard himself had given her a session the week before, which blew her away, so she was at least willing to listen, but I don’t think anything came of it.
We also went to Perelandra, where Leonard introduced me to Machaelle Small Wright. That connection was interesting for a few reasons. For one, I was already using the MAP process in my own healing work with clients, but I had first learned of it in a book by Dr. Joshua David Stone. Dr. Stone gave Machaelle and Perelandra all the credit, to be sure, but I had just kinda glossed over that part. So when I went to Perelandra, at first I didn’t make the connection. When I realized I was sitting with the person who first brought the Ascended Master’s Medical Assistance Program to the earth plane, and at the place where she did it, I was like “Alright! Cool!” So I soaked up as much energy there as I could. I was also gifted a copy of her book for the training center library.
The second interesting connection was that after we moved to St. Croix, someone, totally out of the blue, gifted my wife a copy of that book and a complete set of Perelandra flower essences.
The third interesting connection was this. Machaelle had spent some time at the Findhorn Community in Scotland and had been friends with Peter Caddy, one of the three founders of Findhorn, ever since. So Perelandra is similar to Findhorn in its work with nature, only in the U.S., specifically the east coast. Peter Caddy though, figures prominently in her work on the Mount Shasta Mission, where she has named one of the processes after him. So that brings in the west coast and we come full circle to Dr. Joshua David Stone, who hosted the Annual Wesak Celebrations at Mt. Shasta and who made me the leader of the New York and St. Croix Melchizedek Synthesis Light Academy Ashrams (sequentially, not both at the same time!).
Further, one of the other founders of Findhorn was Peter’s wife, Renata Caddy, and I only recently found out she is also a Babaji devotee, when I stumbled upon her book “Encounters with Babaji”.
So there is a connection back to Leonard Orr as well!
Prior to moving to the Babaji Ashram and Leonard’s Training Center, I had spent some years studying with a Karma Kagyu Tibetan Lama and with a spiritual group studying both “A Course in Miracles” and Alice Bailey Teachings on the Ascended Masters. The leader of that group also tried to start a group to study Agni Yoga (Leaves of Morya’s Garden), but almost no one signed up for it, and after a while, I was the only one who hadn’t quit. It was really intense energy work, and I’m pretty sure it was some Tibetan empowerments and being “officially” introduced to the Karmapa by my Lama, which made it possible for me to persevere.
Along the way, my wife and I met Marianne Williamson at her first attempt to inject Consciousness into U.S. politics, at the founding of her first grassroots organization, studied sound healing with Sharry Edwards at the Institute of BioAcoustic Biology, and learned Sufi Dancing from the Head of the Sufi Order that founded the Omega Institute in New York.
What a long strange trip it’s been!
Sacred Breath 