Mastership Studies

It’s 1974, I’m in Hawaii, and the Magic of the Mystic Isles Unfolds.

Indulge me in setting the stage before I get into what I consider to have been the most transformative time in my life. I grew up in Southern California, raised by my fraternal grandparents, who adopted me at age 5. It was strange and confusing that I knew there was another family out there, yet in those early, formative years I certainly didn’t know where I belonged or who I belonged to. I was raised in the Mormon church, and it was a huge influence on my early belief system. With my real-life mother not in the picture much in those years, I remember she visited me when I was 4 years old and then not again until I was 8 years old. She was essentially a stranger to me, as were my older sister and my older half-brothers. And so, when my mother came back into my life, it was for a one- or two-week visit at age nine and eventually a summer-long visit at age ten. My grandmother never really approved of my mother and her lifestyle of trying to make it in the business world. She dropped enough hints to make me wary, yet the rebel in me sought to know more about my origins. My mother was not very loving, and my summer stays were a work camp. On one visit, she was a manager for a large apartment complex in Las Vegas, where she would put me to work all summer long cleaning and painting the vacant units. At least I got a small allowance and enjoyed time exploring the desert alone. Meanwhile, my sister, who was 9 years older, was becoming a trusted and caring source of emotional support and refuge. My mother was intimidating, and my sister became a mediator in seeking a relationship with her. In my early teens especially, I was developing two separate personalities to deal with my vagabond lifestyle.

My sister, Nina was 9 years older than me and was the closest I got to another human being in my young life. She had the same sense of humor and quick mind as me, with my history of being misunderstood because of my ADHD in school, church, and at home it was so refreshing to find someone that I connected with. It was nice to have her give me a safe haven where I could relax and take off the mask I had constructed to deal with my everyday life. Plus she delighted in “corrupting” this goody two shoes Mormon boy giving me full access to cigarettes, slow gin fizzes, and her husband Playboy magazine subscription. Don’t judge our relationship by todays standards, there were no ratings on movies and we still were watching TV in black and white in the early sixties.

When I was about 14, my sister was going through a divorce and raising my niece and nephew, so she moved into an apartment that was in the complex my mother was managing in Santa Monica. As a side hustle (an unknown term in 1966-68) my mother was trying to launch he career as a full time psychic getting more speaking engagements and advertising her past life readings in Fate magazine. I was curious but at the same time extremely skeptical because of my LDS upbringing of my mothers influence in metaphysical topics. That abruptly changed in 1967 when I was 14. All through my childhood amidst the turmoil and conflicts of my outer life the one constant influence was the spirit of my father. Even though he died when I was 3 weeks old, I felt his presence protecting me and guiding me all my life as a personal guardian angel. My sister and I were arguing over different beliefs and psychic and I wasn’t having any of it, totally resistant with my only focus was of cutting loose and misbehaving