1988 – 1990 Initiation 8: Transition; Cosmic Astral Threshold
INITIATION VIII: TRANSITION (1988 – 1990)
It was probably on Valentine’s Day of 1988 that I entered the beginning stages of the eighth or Transition Initiation; Saturn underwent its first crossing of the archetypal Solstice on February 14, entering Capricorn (Taurus-Equinox Aquarius) then. However, it would soon reverse and go retrograde across this line on June 10, not finally recrossing until November 13, 1988.
I shaved my head around February — I now seemed to be on the bhakti path of the ecstatic devotee — and spent a good deal of time in prayer, meditation, and watching TV. I had never lived completely alone before, and watched with interest as my diurnal cycle shifted to about 25 hours — I would fall asleep an hour later each night, until I was sleeping in the day and awake all night, and then gradually aligned again with the rest of the world. My sleeping pattern also changed — now instead of sleeping 7 or 8 hours straight, I would sleep twice a day, for about three hours at a time.
I believe Don returned to Canada about this time, and Gene was still out of town. I still saw my friend Steve a lot, as well as my volunteer “secretary,” a lovely ex-nun who would type my notes on the Canon and the calendar system. I also spent a lot of time on the phone with Kerry’s mother, Nancy — we enjoyed comparing our various insights and experiences. Once in meditation, I had manifested God in front of me and with shock found that He incandesced with a white-hot passion for me. Another time, I was surrounded by a divine presence of deep Love that was accompanied by a strong scent of roses and jasmine. Yet another time while meditating I suddenly found myself birthing strange deformed creatures — gnomes, horse-headed folk, and the like — that looked like products of Arthur Rackham’s fantasy. To my surprise, I found I Loved these creatures with all my heart: they might be ugly, but they were my children.
On my long walks around Fairfield, I would often find myself etherically shapeshifting into a dignified, ten-foot-tall dragon of a splendid iridescent red and gold, with wings folded capelike down my back. This felt very real, and I could distinctly feel my feet extruding long talons. Almost always on these walks, I would see the devas of Fairfield’s trees and shrubs; we would often exchange bows as I walked past. My mother-in-law Nancy and I would remain on the phone discussing this sort of thing for five or six hours at a time. We were full of plans for hosting a spiritual tour of the Bahamas, but it came to nothing.
Like me, my estranged wife Kerry was now living alone. I would speak to her occasionally on the phone, hoping she would come back to Iowa, but she remained in Seattle. Early in the Spring of 1988, she told me she was finalizing our divorce, and asked me for my half of the fees. I considered it, but refused — I was not in favor of our divorce, and didn’t wish to support it. When I had gotten divorced from Annie, I had desired the divorce; Annie hadn’t — and I had paid all the fees. It seemed only fair that Kerry pay for this one if she wanted it so badly. I asked Kerry’s mother what she thought; she diplomatically refused comment.
Faced with Kerry’s decision, though, I had no choice but to let go of her, even though it was the most painful thing I ever did. My left arm felt suddenly amputated; my entire left side shrieked in agony. And of course, as soon as I let her go, I realized the full extent and depth of my immense unconditional Love for her. How ironic! And yet, how soothing, in a way, to remember that Love never dies.
The divorce papers arrived on Good Friday, and I signed them on Easter Sunday, 1988. Once again I was legally single, poised at the edge of an empty new world. What to do with the rest of my life? I no longer particularly desired to be a Master surrounded by students, nor did I much desire a mate; now I simply wished to be in a loving community of equals, filled with music, magic, color, and laughter. I could clearly see and feel this Renaissance-Fair atmosphere, and I wanted to manifest it. Shortly after I signed Kerry’s divorce papers in the Spring of 1998, Steve called me up in some distress. His new lover had rejected him, and he wanted to take some time off: leave Iowa and drive west, maybe out to Orcas Island to visit our old friends John and Vicki. Steve had always found long-distance driving to be a form of meditation. Did I wish to accompany him? Did I! I was definitely up for a new adventure. I called Nancy to tell her I was leaving for awhile; we packed the trunk of Steve’s new Mercury Cougar and headed west on Route 34 into the setting sun. Steve had something in his car I had never seen before: a portable CD player! Between songs by Enya and Christopher Cross, Steve expanded on his sad tale. It puzzled me; I had met his lover and been most impressed with her outer and inner grace and beauty; her aura glowed a lovely rose color, and she was one of the most heartfilled people I had ever met in Fairfield. Steve was a most chivalrous knight, a true gentleman; I felt they deserved each other and were destined to be together.
That evening we reached Council Bluffs, on the west border of Iowa, and booked a hotel for the night. The next morning we firmed up our plans and decided definitely to go on into the Pacific Northwest to visit Orcas Island.
I still had the Iowa driver’s permit I had acquired last year, and though unfamiliar with the Cougar’s stick shift, I shared a bit of the driving with Steve — we put his car on cruise control; the long, straight desert highways were deserted and I had no fear of causing an accident. A few days later we passed through the Cascades and took the ferry to Orcas. We had called John and Vicki, who welcomed us to Orcas and kindly put us up in their guestroom in Olga for a few days.
Meanwhile, Steve’s lover called — when Steve had just disappeared, she worried greatly, fearing he had perhaps committed suicide, but then discovered I had left also, and thought to call Nancy to ask my whereabouts, and had tracked us to Orcas. It had all been a misunderstanding; they dramatically reconciled, and Steve was ready to return to Fairfield.
I was not, however: despite its unseasonable damp and cold, Orcas called to me even more strongly than before, and I felt I was supposed to stay here. John and Vicki introduced me to the landlord of an apartment complex in Eastsound, where I could rent a unit month-to-month. I asked Steve for a huge favor: On his return to Iowa, would he pack up my stuff and ship it to me? Yes, he would, and he did. As a token of my thanks I gave him my nearly-new portable color TV, and called my Fairfield landlord to give my notice.
I moved into my new apartment in Eastsound, and in my wanderings around town soon remet Valerie and her red-bearded husband Liam; they occupied a small compound just outside of town consisting of an herb garden, some beehives, assorted farm animals, a mobile home for themselves and their two children, another mobile home for Valerie’s shamanic apprentices and their families, and an old schoolbus which had carried Valerie and Liam on their musical tours to Renaissance fairs around the country, and finally here to Orcas where it now served as a large storage unit. I found myself visiting this lively compound more and more often, sharing meals, helping them make medicine bags for sale at the weekend fairs, and comparing notes on the other realms with Valerie, who was a very experienced seer.
It was not long before I left my rather austere apartment and moved into a tent in the woods behind the compound. I donated my monthly income to the commune, and began spending my days exploring the otherworldly dimensions of Orcas with Valerie, sometimes channeling for the group in the evenings, and learning guitar from Liam and the apprentices. I gave them their Solar Initiations, and we spent a good bit of time chanting. Once the whole group took the ferry to neighboring San Juan Island, and we began to chant together on deck: I would spontaneously sing a musical phrase, whereupon the entire group repeated it in chorus. Sometimes the music flowing through me resembled American Indian or Gregorian chant; othertimes an Imam’s call to prayer. We all had tremendous breath control and were pretty skilled musicians; my one-breath phrases got progressively longer and longer and more complex, and the group — children and all — continued to repeat them back flawlessly. God/dess danced between us; the acoustics on the ferry were excellent, and when we finished and came back to earth we noticed a huge number of onlookers had gathered around us, applauding enthusiastically. We all bowed; Liam, a professional minstrel, afterwards laughed and said ruefully we should have passed the hat. Liam played not only the guitar but also the hammer dulcimer and pennywhistle; Valerie played the bowed psalter and the harp, and both sang. They often played and sang at restaurants on Orcas, and had played on the ferry before. Since one of Liam’s favorite singer/songwriters was our family’s old friend Gordon Bok, Liam was obviously a man of good taste!
For some reason it seemed appropriate that Valerie’s three apprentices acknowledged me as Master, as they had Valerie, but it was not long before I rather wished they hadn’t. I found I was carrying them all in my Heart, and feeling their intensely ignorant suffering and seeker’s burn even stronger then they apparently did themselves. No matter how far I rambled on my walks away from the compound, they were always inside me. I was accustomed to rebirthing and dissolving my own pain; how could I deal with others’? Eventually I learned, began to digest it back into bliss, and my spiritual heartburn eased. Valerie and I began spending more and more time in the otherworld. We met a gigantic hill-dragon who put its subtle-body paws on my shoulders and licked my face; its raspy tongue reminded me of a cat’s. Afterwards I found I could better understand the language of birds; when Valerie and I were heading into Madrona Point to swim, a raven called a warning, telling me the water was dangerous and we should turn back. We did, and later discovered there was a red tide that day. We also encountered tall forest elves armed with bows; power-spots, and spacetime vortices, or Wormholes; like me Valerie had a strongly-developed Dragon-Self; we began to feel as if we were two shapeshifting serpents of Myrddin guarding the commune and Liam, who seemed to be King Arthur reborn. Liam’s power animal was the Otter; he was playful and charismatic; but he possessed deep reserves of inner strength and wisdom, coupled with a fiercely passionate love of the land. When one day Liam accepted Orcas’ call to be her King and protector, I had innocently felt the shift in creation from miles away.
Valerie also showed me that not all Serpents were particularly friendly to humans; she questioned one whom I was channeling, who had apparently taken up residence in one of my subtle bodies, and while hearing its/my responses to her, I was shocked to find it had no compassion for me at all; but was unconcernedly fouling its own nest — my subtle body. Needless to say, that particular Serpent was evicted in a hurry! I was surprised and somewhat humbled that my spiritual discrimination had not stood me in better stead, but came to realize that sometimes it takes a second person to discover and heal the demonic one has grown used to living with. About the same time, Valerie performed a Soul Retrieval on me — what fun! I gathered up fragments of myself from every time and space, including some old pieces who were exiled in a self-imposed Hell, and brought them all back into me with a cascade of giggling bliss.
On the Summer Solstice of 1988, Valerie and I had obtained permission to walk on some land of a friend of mine, and we wandered into the woods and came to a large clearing. Suddenly, we both dropped to our knees in awe. The clearing had become an immmense cathedral, hosting an enormous shaft — perhaps fifty feet across — of divine presence plunging into the ground beneath us and reaching to the sky above. This must be the site of the Orcas Temple! We also felt a quick shuffling between our Souls, as if Valerie and I had exchanged parts of ourselves. Unlike the soul retrieval, this felt rather odd, and I never discovered the reason for it. When we later heard that the owner of the land was offering a house for rent on the property, we approached him, mentioned our Solstice experience, and asked if we could move our group there to guard the place and establish the Temple. While the owner was more than agreeable — we had had several enthusiastic discussions and he hoped I might also open a school to teach his children — his wife was not, and though her psychic scans of us showed her we were good people, she was not ready to disrupt her family; she wanted to wait until her children were grown before establishing the sort of thing we had in mind. She did not outright say No, but wanted to wait a few days before deciding. Val and I both felt she had already made up her mind, however. I think perhaps our group seemed too cult-like to her; sometimes it did to me as well.
A few days later, both Valerie and I felt psychically bombarded as we returned from a spiritual journey, and were sitting in a daze looking at the absolute chaos reigning in the mobile home after a communal meal and before cleanup. We looked up, and there was our land-owning friend and his wife. They had come to tell us formally of their refusal; while they acknowledged the holiness of their land, they were simply not ready to host the Temple yet. We just nodded wordlessly; we were not surprised, and had no energy to spare at the moment. I began to realize I was still too personally attached to my visions of the Master-Plan, and had too much invested in trying to force the good prematurely. About this time I began to surrender some of the last seeds of my impatience.
At one point, we came to the mainland to attend a bioregion meeting for which Liam was a delegate, and I found my grace-given healing skills now extended to the inanimate realm. When Liam’s antiquated car stalled and resolutely refused to restart, I channeled a lightning-stroke of electromagnetic energy into the engine and it immediately awoke with a roar! While we were grateful to divinity for the quick-start and for the transportation, we all looked forward to transcending the “infernal combustion engine;” we would have dearly loved to ban gas-powered automobiles on Orcas and use horses and bicycles alone, or at worst electric golf-carts like those in Bermuda. We often visited the horse-farms there, with an eye to meeting and someday buying our horse-partners.
I loved Orcas and wished I could stay forever, but as June gave way to July and then to August I found myself thinking of my family back east — not having seen them in four years — and especially of Martha’s Vineyard, where the entire Goff clan gathered for a reunion every August to celebrate my grandfather’s birthday. My intuition told me I had unfinished business in New England: I was first to meet my new soulmate (I was given a brief vision of a dark-haired woman); second to become grounded in a business; and third to be with my family when an older male relative passed away. After these conditions were fulfilled, I would be free to return to Orcas. I little suspected it would be another seven years before all these tasks were accomplished. I also wondered if I had overly catalyzed our little group; as I was leaving, Valerie released her apprentices and they made arrangements to live elsewhere.
As I firmed up my plans to fly east to Martha’s Vineyard for the family reunion, to my great surprise Valerie announced she was coming with me; she wanted to explore options for their music-making back east, and she wanted to meet my family. Liam was understandably disconcerted — as was I, for I wasn’t at all sure how well my two worlds would intersect! But Valerie was adamant, and as she and I both heartily assured Liam we had no romantic attachments to each other whatosoever, he reluctantly aquiesced.
Gracious as always, my grandparents invited us both to stay with them on Martha’s Vineyard for a few days around my grandfather’s birthday. They lived by the sea, just west of West Chop in an area named Mink Meadows, where my grandfather in partnership with my great-uncle Samuel Fuller had bought 244 acres (including an old golf course and 3000 feet of beachfront) in the 1960s, and over the next decade developed the golf course and clubhouse together with an exclusive residential neighborhood. Around 1975 my grandparents had conveyed their old Chilmark house to my uncle Clark’s family and had built a new house for themselves in Mink Meadows on Goff Road, on a spectacular beachfront rise overlooking the lagoon and Vineyard Sound. Uncle Clark had designed the house as a modified Cape Cod, with stunning panoramic views of Vineyard Sound and numerous guestrooms for the unending round of summer visitors. It had been ideal for us grandchildren; over the years we all had loved kayaking in the lagoon, playing on the sandy beach, and swimming in the healing waters of the Sound. My grandparents now prepared a guest room for Valerie upstairs, while I slept on a fold-out bed in the living room. It was indeed odd seeing them through Valerie’s eyes; I received new insights into some old family patterns, with the usual accompanying expansion of compassion and love. For his birthday I had bought my grandfather two coffee-table books of photographs — one of Martha’s Vineyard, and one of Orcas Island. I had half-hoped my grandfather might be interested in co-developing a healing center on Orcas, but he was now 85, and most of his spiritual and financial energies were invested in his new association with the Jehova’s Witnesses, and he seemed only politely interested in Orcas.
I found myself integrating my various worlds rather well, recounting in excited detail the circumstances of my Ascension to my extended Goff family, and then channeling for the entire group. One day, we all went on a picnic to that part of South Beach my grandparents owned and affectionately called “Tick-Tar.” Valerie and I walked a bit apart from the rest, and went up on a high dune. I was seized with ecstasy and began to sing in Tibetan Overtones at the top of my voice to the seagulls. They immediately responded! For as far as I could see up and down the beach, they wheeled around and flocked over to me in droves — hundreds upon hundreds of them landing on the sand all around us and listening intently to the song flowing through me. Was it because the rising and falling harmonics sounded something like their own speech? Or were they drawn by the bliss? Or both? Whatever the reason they listened, I felt like St. Francis preaching to the birds. They remained for as long as I sang, and when it was done, they waited politely for a few more moments, and then all flew away.
After the party, Valerie and I returned to Salem, where my brother John and his wife kindly put us up in their spacious apartment on Lafayette Street. After a few days in Salem Valerie felt her mission on the East Coast was accomplished, and she flew back to Orcas. I strongly felt I was to remain in Salem, and stayed with my brother John for several months. Unlike the old days when John had stayed in our funky Somerville apartment and slept on the kitchen floor near the refrigerator, I actually had a spare room to myself! During this time I frequently went into Cambridge to visit the bookstores, where I soon met a lovely blonde perusing the new releases at my old employers, the Sphinx and Sword of Love. She smiled and asked me out for coffee, and while I didn’t drink coffee, we did go to a little sidewalk cafe over on Boylston Street. She was lithe, radiantly enthusiastic, intelligent, and humorous, a most talented artist and mask designer, and we became fast friends — even lovers, though our sexual energies never fully melded. After a year of celibacy, my sex chakra was pretty “rusty,” and I also somewhat feared the deep volcanic rage I sensed in her subconscious field. Or perhaps some of it was my own rage? I certainly felt deep anger and frustration at myself when unable sometimes to respond sexually to her great physical beauty. At any rate we loved each other, and my parents loved her too, but we were not true soulmates, and we parted amicably after awhile; she was drawn to Ithaca, New York, while I knew I was supposed to be in Salem.
Shortly after moving to Salem I received more detailed information on my potential soulmate — that she was actually a cashier at Crosby’s Market. This was a bit dismaying — most cashiers were after all in their teens, and after my discords with Kerry I was not overly enthusiastic about much younger women. Nonetheless, I kept my eyes open as I went to Crosby’s on Canal Street every week for groceries, but my soulmate was nowhere in sight. As the weeks slipped by I gradually forgot about her.
About this time, my old friend and colleague Don Porter called me up: Would I be interested in going on tour and teaching the Solar Initiations with him again? In theory this sounded great and I tentatively consented, not wishing to turn down opportunities for service. I didn’t feel a corresponding lightness and enthusiasm inside at the prospect, however, and intuitive as always, Don immediately picked up on my reluctance and we shelved the project for the time being.
September ripened into October, and to John and Jan’s relief I finally found a studio apartment of my own near the center of town, on Lynde Street, in a stately 1920s brick complex named Temple Court. As deepdown I felt myself to be a Priest-King, the name Temple Court certainly seemed appropriate! My new place was on the top floor, the fourth. Though small, it was well-built, clean, in good repair, and very well-lit and sunny.
And now I met my soulmate, though I didn’t yet recognize her! Walking down Essex Street to the library one day, I was struck by the rare presence of a black-haired woman sitting on the Athenaeum steps. About my age, she was darkly beautiful, and breathtakingly self-possessed and charismatic. I did not normally initiate conversation with strange women, but I felt myself drawn off the sidewalk and up the Athenaeum steps to her. She was sketching the Church across the street in charcoal. “Beautiful!” I said to her, not sure if I was referring just to her drawing. But she did not even look up, and after a few moments I went on my way.
The Crosby’s Market where I had previously shopped was too long a walk from my new apartment, and I quickly found a much closer grocery store just past the library up Essex Street. This new store was also called Crosby’s Market. As I brought my purchases to the cashier — a woman about my age — I was surprised by how friendly she was! We exchanged names — hers was Nancy — and before I knew it, we were running into each other everywhere, especially at Crosby’s and at the library. She later told me she was puzzled I didn’t ask her out, but that was not my style — a typical passive Pisces, I never asked women out. Also, I was not especially drawn to Nancy — she seemed to come from a menial background, and I was put off by her strongly nasal Massachusetts accent. Though bright and cheerful, she never seemed to be fully “in her power” when she was cashiering, and I didn’t even recognize her as the same beautifully self-possessed woman I had been irresistibly drawn to on the Athenaeum steps.
By November 13, 1988, Saturn finally recrossed the archetypal Solstice at 0 degrees Capricorn (T-E Aquarius), and so I was now fully in my Eighth Initiation, that of Transition. From a technical standpoint, during this Initiation the Lower Self and Higher Self completely merge; the Higher Self is anchored in the Foot Chakra’s elemental subplane (dense body) while the Lower Self is established in the Crown Chakra’s logoic subplane (subtle spirit). Now the Cosmic Physical cycle is complete, and a new cycle begins with the Cosmic Astral Threshold, as the new higher-octave (Cosmic Astral) Lower Self occupies the Foot and the new (Cosmic Astral) Higher Self energizes the Crown Chakra. While theoretically one now has full use of the spiritual Love-energies of the Cosmic Physical Multiverse, and is beginning to identify with the frequencies of the Cosmic Astral planes, I recall this time as being rather like all transitions — one area of activity was done; the next was not yet clear. I knew only that it was time to do as Carla’s guides had strongly suggested six years earlier, and ground myself fully, so that I was in the world while not of it. I knew this involved being married, as I was not in this lifetime destined to follow my old path as a Buddha or a renunciate. It seemed perhaps that the guides had picked Nancy to be my soulmate, though I was not especially drawn by this prospect; the differences in our backgrounds seemed almost insurmountable. On the other hand we might make a good team, as she clearly possessed a groundedness I lacked. Anyhow, I was willing to follow my dharma, but not to make the first move.
It was around January of 1989 that I realized it was time to cut my last symbolic tie with Kerry; I took the gold wedding ring she had given me (engraved inside with the Renaissance posy “I lyke my choyce”) and with some final pangs sold it for $10 at a second-hand gold shop around the corner. I followed this up with some more release and forgiveness affirmations to completely bless and heal us both, now on our separate paths.
About a month later Nancy’s and my relationship really deepened. It happened one day that we were the only two people on a bus to Boston — she was going to sketch in the Museum of Fine Arts, and later to attend an Etta James concert in Cambridge, and I was going to Cambridge to apply for a job at Greenpeace. With a full hour’s journey ahead, I moved to sit next to her, and we began to talk. It turned out we were both long-term TM meditators; she had begun in 1972, a year before me! And we were both artists; she often took classes at the Montserrat College of Art, and worked in oils and charcoal — and now I recalled my one-sided encounter with the woman on the Athenaeum steps — had that been she? It was; she remembered me well. (She later told me she had noticed how handsome I was, and wondered at the time why she hadn’t spoken to me.) Deeply spiritual, she had like me been studying the world’s sacred scriptures. (I later found she had also in fact been praying to her angels for her soulmate: she wanted to find a long-term meditator and be together “in the ancient way,” and was told she didn’t have to go look for him at the Cambridge TM Center; that she would find him in Salem!) She had never been married, and I told her I had been married twice. As her eyebrows lifted in shock, I said airily, “Oh, marriage is great; you should try it!” I told her I wanted someday to live on a boat, and she laughted and said she had once bought a boat to live on herself, but it wasn’t nearly as fun as she had thought it would be. We also both loved really old books and typography; she had even majored in print media at R.I.T., and had worked at Conde´ Nast on Madison Avenue in New York City immediately after graduation. Like me, she had tired of professional life and was now spending as much time as possible following her bliss. Despite my divorces, and despite her accent, we liked each other and seemed to have a lot in common, and as the bus pulled into Boston we exchanged phone numbers.
Our first official date was on my 33rd birthday, March 13, 1989; she took me to a Chinese restaurant. Though the food was so-so, I enjoyed the company. We swiftly became lovers and while I initially encountered some deep black shame in her subconscious field, I felt I could work with this and heal it. Overall her field felt light and delightful.
Meanwhile, I had signed up to work for Greenpeace, both to quickly repay the Visa-card debt Kerry had incurred during our separation, and to atone for the elephant’s tusk I had purchased from my mother and was now scraping and sanding to prepare for scrimshawing. Though an antique, it was only about two feet long, and I felt the pain of the young elephant who was killed for its ivory. But Salem’s rich history deeply inspired me and I had decided to dedicate this scrimshaw to my adopted city; perhaps I could sell the tusk to one of the local museums where it might be used as a teaching tool.
After a crash-course in Greenpeace’s particular issues, I was given a clipboard and sent door-to-door every evening in various Boston suburbs to gather donations and petition signatures, and to sell subscriptions to the Greenpeace magazine. I had long felt the ecological pain of the planet, but I still approached this job with some trepidation, as it appeared to be less overtly “spiritual” work than I had been used to. Also, it required over an hour’s commute into Cambridge every afternoon; I wouldn’t get home until close to midnight. Still, I knew I had to ground myself, and this seemed to be a good way to do it.
At first the work felt almost Dickensian. It was still winter; my work-nights were bitterly cold, dark, windy, and snowy, and I had to juggle a flashlight, clipboard, petitions, magazines, pay envelopes, and cash, as well as deal with my potential customers’ indifference, scorn, anger, and rejection. Taking off my gloves to write someone’s name and address legibly on a subscription form would leave my hands numb long after I had redonned my gloves. We had to make a quota of $100 per night and for the first few nights I did not do too well, and my supervisor was muttering darkly about firing me. But within a few days I hit my stride, found my own “soul-note” message of enthusiasm and inspiration, focussing on the good that Greenpeace was achieving, rather than on the still-gloomy ecological prospects, and was surpassing my quota comfortably. Once I even canvassed a wealthy elderly woman near Carlisle who had known my great-grandfather, Henry Vose Greenough! After a lovely chat she donated $300, so that I made over $400 for Greenpeace that evening, something of a record. Even without old family contacts, though, I was consistently one of the group’s best canvassers, and was being asked by other members to share my secrets, which I did to the best of my ability: Shake off rejection or negativity immediately; pray to God or Goddess between houses (I often chanted OM NAMAH SHIVAYA to completely dissolve any negativity back into Love); see each new customer as your long-lost best friend; speak to their Higher Self; seek to inspire and enthuse rather than to manipulate with guilt. It soon came out that I channeled, and I began demonstrating channeling and energy-work for other Greenpeace members, who started coming to visit me in Salem for more in-depth counseling sessions.
About this time my father came to visit; I believe he was on his annual migration north from Mexico to Maine, where he was planning to do some treasure-hunting. His favorite vehicle was usually his old BMW motorcycle, but this year he was driving a battered old Saab loaded down with ancient camping equipment; its brakes were so bad he had to open his door and stick his foot out on the pavement to bring it to a full stop. I introduced him to Nancy, and they immediately became fast friends. My father’s independent bohemianism reminded Nancy sweetly of her own wilder days in her twenties when she was living on Derby Street. My father proudly opened his wallet to show us pictures of his second- (or third-) hand camper, which he had purchased in California, but which was now permanently parked as his semi-autonomous guest-quarters in the driveway of his parents’ winter home on the Main Line in Ithan, Pennsylvania. He took us both to Little Caesar’s for pizza: “Don’t say I never gave you anything!” he half-joked. As had been our custom for over twenty years, he challenged me to a hand-stand contest, which we performed on the sidewalk outside while waiting for the pizza. We were both in our physical prime now, and after standing on our hands for about five minutes we called it a tie. After we had eaten and taken Nancy home, Dad and I continued to discuss spiritual matters. He had always been interested in my various experiences, and in enlightenment — his old books on mysticism by Evelyn Underhill and Alan Watts and Ram Dass had been my close friends in my teens — but he was hard-put to explain my Ascension. Ever the experimental psychologist, he made a few stabs at finding physiological explanations for the light-beings my Ascension-mates and I had seen. “Were they cloud-cover reflections from some neighboring city?” No; they moved around. “Were they random optic-nerve firings?” No, they were large masses; we all saw them; they appeared intelligent. Finally he gave it up, and cautioned me not to speak of it in public, as it sounded insane. I knew how it sounded of course, but still felt impelled to speak out when people showed any interest. I didn’t much care what anyone thought of me, anyhow, and the matter demanded to be spoken of! It was like a live-wire seeking its ground! I knew there were many others who had had or were going to have this experience, and the more information we shared on it, the better. It didn’t matter if some of my information “seeds” fell on stony ground; many would eventually take root.
One balmy night in April while canvassing in Concord for Greenpeace, I was suddenly violently attacked on the subtle planes. I almost collapsed; before I knew what was happening, my attacker had punched and torn a huge hole over my solar plexus and was draining me of vitality so quickly I thought I would die. I quickly sealed the rift and climbed into the lap of my God/dess, immersing myself in the radiance of Golden Love. I was still so weak and shaken that I was hard-put to finish my evening’s canvassing, but somehow with divine grace I managed. Who had done this? I thought I knew; it had the earmarks of my Fairfield ex-lover’s husband, the one who felt he was a reincarnation of Rasputin, but I was puzzled. Why would he attack me now, of all times? I had corresponded with her recently, but our relationship had long been over. But if I remember correctly, that was when she finally obtained full closure with him and obtained her divorce, and as catalyst I was being held to blame. I resolved any residual guilt, firmly forgave myself and all other parties involved, and silently gave thanks to my attacker for pointing out some weaknesses in me as opportunities to vibrate to a higher level. And so it was done. During this Transition Initiation, one is able to resonate or “channel” a harmonic fifth above the Cosmic Physical Crown/Cosmic Astral Foot, to the Solar Plexus Center of the Cosmic Astral Body. I wonder now if this was the deeper purpose behind my wounding in the Solar Plexus and consequent realignment with the Golden Love of the God/dess.
Sometime in May, I began to feel as if my work at Greenpeace was done. I had paid off Kerry’s old Visa-card debts, and felt I had balanced the karma of the elephant’s tusk, which I had scraped and sanded until my hands were bloody. Also, I had now auditioned for and been accepted by the Paul Madore Chorale, and our evening practices conflicted with my work for Greenpeace. Furthermore, canvassing for Greenpeace had gotten too easy, and there was no room for advancement unless I was willing to get a driver’s license, which I wasn’t. I was also slightly disillusioned with Greenpeace. While doing great work with toxins awareness, recycling, and global warming, it focussed on issues like saving baby seals, which, while emotionally potent, didn’t seem as vital as preserving the Rainforests, which Greenpeace ignored entirely. (I decided to do some inner manifestation to preserve the Rainforests, and was pleased with the “coincidental” immediate results.) One day before canvassing, a co-worker offered me a few potato chips, and shortly thereafter I found myself vomiting copiously. I wryly noted the symbolism; I could no longer “stomach” working for Greenpeace! With great affection, I gave my notice and said goodbye to my friends there, though some continued to visit me in Salem. One of them was an erstwhile supervisor, a beautiful woman from my own upper-middle class, of whom Nancy was quite jealous — particularly after my guides commented on the supervisor’s sweetly high-pitched soul-note, while calling Nancy’s a “deep bell!” In deference to Nancy I did not encourage the friendship. The supervisor’s ex-boyfriend, another Greenpeace supervisor, also became a good friend: he was a TM meditator who, despite the medication he took for bipolar syndrome, was still pretty certain he had been psychically tortured by vengeful administrators within the TM Movement. While this sounded like paranoia to me, I withheld final judgement. I saw no great split in his field, as I did in schizophrenics, and I was certainly no stranger to psychic attacks myself. To be on the safe side, I went over some techniques in psychic self-defense with him.
A New-Age lightworker from Washington, D.C. also came to visit. She had heard about my Solar Initiations from some other Initiates there, was interested in being my manager, and wished to know if I wanted to teach publicly again in the D.C. area. Would I be willing to change my image — cut off my beard and long hair and wear a tie? Certainly, in theory. I didn’t care about my image, one way or the other; changed it all the time, in fact. She was very excited about Orion energies, which I mistrusted and cautioned her about, as most Orionite energy I had encountered seemed to be overly concerned with manipulation and personal power. I offered to show her the Pleiadean energies I had ascended with, but just as I began to vibrate to them, she recoiled and said No. Odd; I had never gotten that reaction before! However, she was fascinated by the Hypersphere model I had just fashioned of thirteen wooden spheres (obtained only after much telephoning followed by a long bicycle ride to a craftshop in a neighboring town), arranged as a cluster of twelve — carefully glued in a Vector-Equilibrium Matrix or cuboctahedron pattern — around the central thirteenth, and then nicely painted all in their proper colors. She enthusiastically asked me for it, and I hesitantly gave it to her. She thanked me, gave me a black “Apache’s tear” stone in return, and promised to call me about opportunities in Washington. I expected this to come to nothing, and it did. The whole experience left an odd taste in my mouth; after she had left I thought of my lovely model, looked at the dour stone that replaced it, and wondered: was this some sort of symbolism for grounding? Or was I giving away too much of my own personal power? Maybe Orion had something to teach me after all.
Meanwhile, almost from our first date, I had been asking Nancy to move in with me, but she really loved her tiny apartment over on Howard Street. However, just as the trees outside her place were in full bloom, her landlord walled over two of her four windows, so suddenly my light, airy apartment looked a lot better! We were a bit crowded in my studio apartment — neither of us had any private space, but we made the best of it for nearly a year.
My apartment was still lined with hundreds of the exquisite quartz crystals I had bought in Arkansas with Gene Garfin and my Fairfield ex-lover; these stones let me know it was now time to release most of them to other owners. I carefully wrapped up about 95% of them and brought them to the Crystal Chamber, where I sold them for a price so ridiculously low the gleestruck proprietors could hardly believe their good fortune. I had recouped my initial investment many times over by then, and I delighted in the proprietors’ delight. At another time, I brought them some prints of esoteric cards I had just designed in pen-and-ink, illustrating various aspects of the Canon. The proprietress was giving a psychic reading behind a curtain in the corner, so I sat on the floor to wait until she was done before offering them to her for sale. One of my cards showed a medieval caravel sailing atop waves drawn in heraldically-stylized undulating parallel bands, and I found myself staring deeply at these ripples while thinking of the proprietress. Just then I heard her saying to her client, “I am seeing ripples, waves, an ocean…” With a start, I realized I was affecting her reading, and quickly moved my mind elsewhere. She was a pretty good psychic! And she bought all my cards, which I had signed Ruddysmith Pendragon — “Ruddysmith” being a translation of my name, Rory Goff, and “Pendragon” because that was what I was — a Chief Dragon, a Priest-King.
I was growing more and more interested in the meanings behind my various names — since Goff was Welsh for both “Red” and “Smith,” Milton (“Mill-town”) LeRoy (“The King”) Goff (“Red/Smith”) IV could be interpreted as “the (fourth) Smith-King (or Red King) of the Place of the Mill,” which mythologically meant the North Pole (Polaris now, but in ancient times Alpha Draconis, the Head of the Dragon or Pendragon) and its revolving stars, but could as easily mean the Solar System and its revolving planets. At the same time, Rory meant “Ruddy,” or “Famous Ruler,” or “Lord of the Ring (or perhaps Orb),” and (particuarly in its original Irish form Ruaidri) seemed to be cognate with the Vedic Rudra, the Red Lord, or prototypical Shiva. All of this pointed to Mars, the fourth planet in the Mill-wheel of the Solar System, and Mars was exalted in Capricorn in my (traditional Western) astrological chart, and its overall ruler. In my own Taurus-Equinox system, my Sun was in Aries, ruled by Mars — symbolized by the Emperor, or Red King, in Tarot. Was it just coincidence that I had so completely identified with Sanat Kumara and Shiva during my Ascension and thereafter, or was the experience perhaps built right into my name? If so, what of the three Milton LeRoy Goffs before me? Was I the only one who had manifested the archetypal potential in our name, or had we all done that in our different ways? Food for thought, anyhow.
Over that next year, I researched and devised an overall plan for the elephant’s tusk, selected and sketched the specific illustrations I wanted to include, and scrimshawed the tusk, which was eventually to be entirely covered with engravings of Salem’s history. Several months before it was finished, though, Nancy and I moved to a larger Temple Court apartment which opened up in March, next entrance over and one floor down. It had two bedrooms; Nancy and I would finally each have our own room! Maybe now with some personal space our relationship would take an upturn. There was no denying it had been difficult. Nancy would often scream at me, which I suffered through until I finally thought to ask her why — was she afraid I wasn’t listening? I suggested that if she felt the impulse to scream in the future, maybe she could just grab my ears and speak quietly right to my face. She laughed, and never screamed again — nor did she ever grab my ears! But a deeper problem lay within my own “Boston Brahmin” ego. While I was proud of her strong ethics and spirituality, her cheerful intelligence and her artistic and musical talents, I cringed at her working-class background, evinced by her frequent grammatical errors and her harsh accent. I was shocked again and again by the depths of her ignorance. An accomplished and very popular student in middle school, she had spent much of her high school career doing drugs, skipping school and hanging out with the other pot-heads on Dane Street Beach. To be fair, she had read most of the classics — more of them than I had, even — at age nineteen, while living on welfare for a year! And of course she had eventually gone on to graduate from highly-esteemed R.I.T. But our backgrounds were just so different — and worst of all, Nancy was now thinking about joining the Army Reserves. We had just had dinner with Sarah (who like me sang in Paul Madore’s Chorale) and her boyfriend Scott, who had just finished Army Paratrooper training, and apparently Nancy found Scott’s martial zeal contagious. In theory I wanted to get married, but I really couldn’t conceive of marrying an Army soldier! We had been together for a year now, and we still didn’t mesh well. More and more often, I expressed my doubts: Perhaps it was time to cut our losses and separate. It was certainly time for a change.
