We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets “Little Gidding”

The implication in this passage from T.S. Eliot is that we are all explorers in our journeys through life. The more seasoned explorers notice circular patterns and recognize familiar markers along the way.

But what happens when you come around the Circle and you recognize you are back at the starting point? My experience is that when you recognize the starting point the Circle of Life becomes an upward spiral. And if you go around the circle too many times without recognizing the starting point the spiral begins to move downward.

My starting point is an understanding that going around the Circle without a connection to my own spiritual essence is an exercise in circular monotony. The longer that circular monotony goes on, the more the downward spiral increases in speed. I experienced my first upward spiral as a senior in high school. I remained on that spiral until I was about 40 years old. Then a downward spiral began. Now, in my 60s, I feel myself back on the upward track.

The world has always been filled with people who feel their lives and the world around them are “spiraling out of control”. I contend that this is an indication of a lack of spiritual growth; an inability to harmonize the spiritual being that we are with the physical being that we are.

Just as we can measure ourselves by years of physical life as children, adolescents or adults, we can measure our spiritual growth in a similar manner. The downward spiral is a result of the physical age and the spiritual age of an individual not matching up. An adult who has spent his entire life focused on the “outward” and with no focus at all on the “inward” finds their life out of balance. Physically they are an adult. Spiritually they are a child.

As I said, I first got in touch with my “spirit self” while in high school. My four years in College and the ensuing four years in the U.S. Navy were predominately a time of inner exploration. If I had gotten credit for all the books I read about religion and spirituality while in College and the Navy I could have easily gotten a PhD in that field.

After the U.S. Navy I set out in search of my Spiritual Community. From the East Coast I took a Greyhound Bus to Texas. From the Panhandle of Texas I hitchhiked up to Alaska and then down into California. Along the way I met various other members of the 1970s Inner Explorer Club. I stayed at various spiritual communities along the way. I sat in Quaker Circles, stayed in hostels run by young members of a “Catholic” sect, spent time camping in Chaco Canyon and wilderness areas throughout the Southwest and Northwest. I attended a 9-day Bahai workshop in Alaska. And I ended up in a Yoga community founded by a direct disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda. I spent 13 months there in Grass Valley, CA. It was there I had profound visions during meditation that led me to where I am today.

Some 40 years later I am married with 3 grown children and two grandchildren. The spiritual community I have been a part of for those 40 years would turn out to be one of the most reviled in modern American history. The community has weathered all manner of persecution from Christians, the media, and even the U.S. government.

But this blog will not be an insider’s tell-all. It will not be a persecution of the persecutors. It will be a story of personal spiritual growth that has occurred as a result of my interfaith journey.

It will be about how my journey reached a zenith and then devolved into a circular treadmill. It will be about how I got off the treadmill and how I again arrived at where I had started. And of how I have come to “know the place for the first time”.