At the beginning of my journey

have always had a burning desire to understand how the univers

feel better about the totally unexplained, and unexplainable,

predicament we seem to find ourselves in. Human existence, or any

other kind of existence, was simply an accident of nature and had

no particularly fathomable meaning. I preferred to admit that I

didn’t know how we got here or why, rather than to adopt a sim-

plistic explanation merely to gain a sense of security. I believed that

truth was rational and anything that couldn’t be proved scientifi-

cally didn’t exist. I also felt somewhat condescending toward peo-

ple who were weak enough to have to make up a god to believe in.

The positive side of this upbringing was that I didn’t get a lot

of the rigid dogma and deeply negative messages about right and

wrong, heaven and hell, and sin that so many people receive in their

early religious training. On the other hand, I had no conscious con-

cept or experience of the spiritual dimension of life, and no answers

for the questions I had about the meaning and purpose of my life.

My parents really wanted a child, and were very loving to me.

Unfortunately they were unable to work out their own relationship

and were divorced when I was two years old. Although I don’t

remember it clearly, I know this event had a major impact on my

life and affected my later patterns in relationship. After the divorce,

I lived with my mother who never remarried or had any other chil-

dren. My father did remarry, and I often visited my father and his

other family.

My mother developed a successful career as a city planner in the

days when there were few women in that field. She dealt with the

usual challenges of single parenting — trying to balance the needs

of her child with the demands of her work. Being the only child of

a working mother, I developed a strong sense of responsibility and

self-sufficiency quite early.My mother is a very adventurous person. She loves to try new

things, and for me, she was a great role model of fearlessness and

pioneer spirit. She had been one of the first educated American

women in her generation to have natural childbirth. I was the first

baby her doctor had ever delivered without an anesthetic. I was

blessed with a very fortunate birth. (On September 30, 1948, at

9:10 p.m. in Trenton, New Jersey, for all you astrologers!)

My mother loves to explore new places and we traveled a lot

when I was a child — all over the United States, to the West

Indies, Mexico, Hawaii, Europe. We also moved frequently when-

ever my mother changed jobs. Until I was about fifteen, I had never

lived in one place longer than two or three years.

My mother’s family had been Quakers and we still used the

“plain language” when speaking to my grandmother (saying “thee”

rather than “you” for the Quakers is an acknowledgement of the

god within each person). So, on a deep level, I absorbed the pro-

found respect for spirit and concern for humanity that is woven

into the fabric of the Quaker religion, which I feel had a strong

influence on me later in my life.

When I was fourteen years old I went through an enormous

emotional crisis. Triggered initially by the collapse of my first

romance (with an “older” man of nineteen — I was sure no one

would ever compare), it snowballed into a deep and long-lasting

existential despair. I took a long hard look at life and recognized

the things that were supposed to provide significance in life — edu-

cation, success, relationships, money — were in themselves

ephemeral, meaningless, and empty. There didn’t seem to be any-

thing else to fill the void. I was deeply disillusioned and depressed,

and basically remained in that state for several years.

In retrospect, I can see that I was going through an experience

that all of us must pass through at one time or another (or many

times) — what mystics call the piercing of the veil of illusion. It’s

the point where we begin to recognize that our physical world is

not the ultimate reality and we turn inward to discover the spiritu-

al aspect of our existence. At these times, we usually feel, emo-

tionally, that we are hitting bottom, but as we actually hit bottom

it’s as if we fall through a trap door into a new place — the inner

realm of the soul, where we can begin to explore our connection

to life in a whole new way. When we can face our fears and move

through such a “dark night of the soul,” we are greeted by the

dawn of a profound new adventur

that there was really no point or meaning to it. I could see that all