In the summer of 1974, with Watergate still at the top of the news, I concluded that a massive insurrection was imminent. I was very afraid for all of us. For myself, I wanted nothing to do with it. All I could think of was to get as far away as I could from the probable battlefields of the cities, and wait it out. After all, someone had to be there to pick up the pieces afterward, assuming there was an afterward.

I went to see a psychic for the first time around then, and the only thing I remember her telling me was that I would be going to "a place to the East" that would be a place of peace and power for me, a place where I could clarify my values, regenerate my heart, and come to the understandings I sought. At the time, I took this to mean at least Idaho, if not Montana or Wyoming.

With my paranoia growing at an alarming rate, I sought to provide myself with a means of escape and therefore survival. With no idea what I would do or how I would accomplish it, I gave notice to the managers of my apartment. In the next three weeks, I sold nearly everything I owned, used the money to buy a 15' travel trailer, and moved into it. I still had 10 days of rent prepaid when I hitched up and drove away. I have never felt more free in my life, before or since, as I did at that moment.

I moved the trailer into a small park near Tualatin, and went about the business of completing preparations for what I hoped would be my imminent departure. It was soon clear that my trailer, without refrigeration, heat, or real plumbing, was not going to sustain me at even the barest level. I shopped for and bought an 18' Kenskill within a couple of months. I talked the seller into taking half down and the rest in 90 days. I borrowed the down from a friend, and moved both trailers to my friend Dick's house--the old one in the driveway, and the new one in the backyard. And there I lived, in Dick's backyard for who knew how long.

I had been becoming increasingly involved with Astrology for a couple of years, and I spent a lot of time hanging around bookstores, talking to those with common interests.

In the course of developing these relationships, I came to feel that my aversion to any concept of reincarnation may have been a bit premature. I knew many people whom I liked and respected and among whom reincarnation was taken for granted. Yet I still had two fundamental problems with it. One, that reincarnation required a soul, or something like it, that persisted after the body was no longer habitable. The trouble was that if I had a soul, where the hell was it and why couldn't I find it? Second, that if I have lived before, why don't I remember? I could find no reasonable answers to either of these two questions. Yet I was curious, and I felt that I was missing out on something that others were not.

Finally, in late November of 1974, I wrote a poem to express my willingness to explore reincarnation with an open mind. This is what I wrote.

Could it be
that once upon
a gray and yellow time
there was a woman,
like my mind?

And maybe once before,
in forgotten days of yore,
there was a man,
and I am he.

And perhaps a thousand years
and a hundred million tears
will bring a child
who will be me.

And maybe we
will be forever.

I felt very strongly about this poem, but shared it with no one—not yet, at least.

On the evening of Friday December 6th, I received a phone call from a close friend, Elaine. She called to ask me if I intended to go to the Psychic Fair at Lewis and Clark College that weekend. I didn't even know about it. I was down to my last $15, and the registration fee was $10. I said I hadn't planned on it. Then she told me that Dane Rhudyar, the patron saint of humanistic astrology, was the keynote speaker. I suddenly felt that destiny was calling me in a not too quiet voice. I had to go. He was getting very old and did not travel often, so this was in all likelihood the last chance I would ever have to meet him. It somehow seemed critically important.

Next morning, I met Elaine at Lewis and Clark, and we went into the auditorium together. We hung around the foyer for a while, and since no one asked us for the registration fee, we decided that we wouldn't mention it. In other words, we crashed the party. This becomes significant soon.

We sat on one of the center aisles, me on the outside. The first speaker was an astrologer and author from Seattle, Marc Robertson. I had met Marc on several occasions, and even had him do my chart the previous summer while I was working in Seattle.

His talk was on reincarnational astrology, which I thought rather interesting considering my recent inner debate about the subject. I took notes while he talked, and at one point I wrote down a book he said he had just read: Seth Speaks by Jane Roberts. While he spoke, I wrote down a copy of the above poem to give him afterward.

As he walked up the aisle past me on his way out, I handed him a folded piece of notebook paper with the poem on it. It was time for a break then, and Elaine and I walked out after Marc. In the back of the auditorium there was a table with stacks of books on it. All were written by people who were speaking at the fair, all that is except one: Seth Speaks. I can still see the stack of three copies sitting on the corner of the table nearest me. I stopped to look as we walked by, and the cover price jumped out at me: $2.95. In my mind I had already spent $10, so buying this book seemed like a gift, one which I readily accepted.

Dane Rhudyar spoke after Marc, and I was deeply disappointed. My would-be guru turned out to be little more than a nice old man with a terrible Danish accept. I was not a happy camper. After lunch, we split up into workshops. The one I wanted to attend was already filled, so I chose one conducted by a bright young man named Richard from Marin County. He absolutely blew me (and just about everyone else) away. Suddenly I was sure that he was the real reason I had come. He was going to show me the answers to all the questions I had, and he would do it using astrology, not reincarnation. At the end of the day, Elaine asked if she could borrow Seth Speaks for a few days. I was so jazzed by Richard's material that I quickly said yes.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I spent all my time going over my notes from Richard's workshop. By Wednesday night, I was just about used up. Elaine had called and we got together for coffee that evening. She dutifully returned the book, and we talked about what we had seen and heard at the fair.

The next day, with my passion for astrology sated, I decided to open Seth Speaks and see what I had bought. In the first few sentences, I sensed that it was something special. I didn't know why, or just how special it was, but the feeling was strong and clear nonetheless.

Somewhere around page 20 or so (I've since read the book cover to cover at least a half dozen times, and still haven't found the sentence) I read something that drove through me like a cosmic ice pick. I suddenly realized that I had arrived at a place I had been waiting all my life to find. I knew, even though I had read very little of the book, that I held in my hands the answers to every question I had ever had, and that it had been waiting patiently here for me all along. I knew that I had always known it a some level, but that I had to get here on my own, without that knowledge. I knew that nothing would ever be the same for me, not ever again.

I saw that many things I had held onto for years, things I had come to hate, especially in myself, were in fact the best in me, in all of us. I saw that I had protected them so that they would be here for me now when I needed them, that what I had come to think of as a crippling weakness in me was actually a sign of great spiritual wisdom, power, and perseverance. I realized that I was at last vindicated. I was not the weak-minded fool I had feared I was, but rather a soul so advanced I had never been able to see it before. I knew I had kept myself in the dark for some very special purpose which I was now about to discover.

All this took place in less than an instant. I burst into a wailing the like of which I had never known possible. The relief was so enormous that it left me lying on my bed sobbing until there was simply no more to be done. I then continued reading the book.

I read it day and night until I was finished. Every page contained something beautiful, something precious, something I had waited a lifetime to remember. I learned nothing. I already knew it all. The book, as it said, was there only to remind us of what we already know. And that it did with extraordinary grace, clarity, and wisdom.

My paranoia had led me directly to a euphoria that only the deepest insight can provide. I went so far South, I ended up going North in an instant without the need to turn around. And my life did indeed change in ways that left nothing untouched, because I changed. The person I had been ceased to exist at that moment, and the person I had always been (and I do mean always) emerged.

The message was very simple: you create your own reality. Only it is not meant as a metaphor, nor a catchy phrase, nor an empty bromide. It is meant to be taken literally, completely, without exception. It means, as Seth put it, "You have been given the gift of the gods: you create reality." We are essentially magical creatures who possess the ability—no the spiritual imperative—to turn thought into reality, physical and otherwise. What we do not create, we will not experience. What we experience, we create. There are no exceptions. It is to that extent, and only that, a closed system.

No circumstance or experience is forced upon us. We create it all, though we do work with others to create shared events. Yet our participation in those shared creations is that of gods at play, not soldiers at war, nor fools at their folly. We are gods in training, each and all of us. And we know exactly what we're doing, even when we don't allow ourselves to consciously realize it. This change of perspective is what turned me and my world inside out in an instant.