Joelle Steele's Blog - SPIRITUALITY

Blog Subjects: Creativity * Health * Intelligence * Money * Politics
Relationships * Social Issues * Miscellaneous

06/24/2024: When One Door Closes ...

Life is filled with disappointments, often unexpected, with many outside of our control, and others the result of something we did or didn't do. And it's very easy to feel sad or hopeless, to get stuck in that moment, to be unable to let it go and move on. But as has been quoted by many people," when one door closes, another one opens." You may also have heard it as "when God closes a door, he opens a window," or words to that effect.

And it's true. We just don't always know there's another door because we're so fixated on the one that just closed, mourning the loss of what it represented in our lives. And even when we know where another door is, sometimes we're afraid of what might be behind it. There's a song by blues singer/songwriter/musician Deanna Bogart called "Peephole" that speaks to just that. The song is about opportunity knocking, and the lyrics in part are:

Another chance may not come around
Find yourself singing the same old song
Somebody's knocking
Could be all you've been waiting for
Don't just look through the peephole
You've got to open the door

Opportunity is always out there, maybe knocking at your door, but if you don't walk away from the past, you'll never be there to answer it.

From 1979 to 1997 – eighteen miserable years – I lived in southern California. I never liked it, but a long and involved set of unpleasant circumstances had made it pretty much impossible for me to leave. And, I didn't even know where I wanted to go. It just felt like such a dead end for me, even though I had a business and was doing pretty well financially. I was reluctant to let go. Opportunity knocked for me to relocate. Not once, not twice, but three times: 1984, I didn't answer; 1990, I didn't answer; and 1995 – oh yeah, duh, like maybe I should open that door.

It took me a couple years to divest myself of my business interests in southern California, and in 1997, I moved to Monterey, California, the place where I grew up in the 1950s and 60s, the home of my parents for decades. It was familiar and I felt it would be a good move for me. And it was at first. Monterey is lovely, but it had turned out to be a transitional place. Lots of things finished, started, and in other ways resolved, business was good, significant other was a great guy.

Did I really want to move, to leave this all behind? I was conflicted again. There was only one place I had ever really wanted to live, and that was Washington state, the home of all my family members. And it was one of those family members, my brother, who knocked this time, in 2005. And I answered. It was the opportunity to move to Washington state, and I did.

Bad news. The move was terrible, the house I moved into was a shambles, I couldn't find work, I couldn't take public transportation because it was limited in the area where I was living. I was missing Monterey so much. I was anxiety-ridden, depressed, even feeling suicidal on a few occasions. What had I done?

Then I had a conversation with my cousin Carol who lived near me. She casually said, "Didn't you used to teach?" And my first thought was, well, yes I did. I had been adjunct faculty at several colleges in California, but I didn't teach enough to make a living at it. It was just something I did two or three times a year. But then I started thinking about opportunity. Carol had just opened a door for me, and I walked right in. Her brother Ken helped me get a car so that I could teach. For ten years, I taught twelve different subjects, nine each quarter, four quarters per year, at seven different colleges, almost every Saturday. Thank you, Carol! This teaching opportunity left me with lots of time each week to write articles and books, to paint, to visit my many relatives, to fix up my house, and to enjoy the state of Washington. I've been happily here for more than 18 years.

When this door closes, I know that another will open. So I keep that door ajar. I am always open to see what's in store for me, what the next opportunity will be, because when it comes knocking, you can be sure I will answer it!

02/09/2024: The True Definition of Success

When most people think about being successful they tend to think about money, about being rich, or about being rich and famous. For more than 20 years, I lived in southern California where the majority of my clients were rich celebrities living in Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Brentwood, Malibu Colony, and other neighborhoods inhabited by those who live large and often extravagant lifestyles. But you know what? They have ALL the exact same problems that everyone else does. The only difference is that they have more money than most people. And don't think for a minute that having a lot of money means you have no financial worries. Rich people have money problems just like the rest of us, including lack of money and/or work, money mismanagement and overspending, embezzlement by their financial managers and advisors, business and stock market failures, and expensive lawsuits – just to name a few financial issues.

They also have problems with illness and deaths (their own and their family members), addiction, divorces, child custody, issues, fires, floods, earthquakes, accidents, relationship problems, psychological and emotional issues, and more. Just like the rest of the world. So why is there such a big emphasis on money as the marker of success?

Well, what something looks like is often what people aim for. They see the big house, the fancy car, the yacht, the jet-set lifestyle, the fame, and on top of it all, the fortune. And so they aim to get famous and make big money. But if fame and fortune are the measure of success, why are so many rich and famous people unhappy? My two psychotherapist friends in Los Angeles used to talk about the problems of their wealthy celebrity clients – not by name, of course – and it was amazing how many of them did not set out to be actors or singers or whatever. They set out to be famous, to get attention, and to do whatever they saw as being the money ticket.

To me, money has never been the goal. To me, money has always been nothing more than a tool to buy things and services which are helpful and necessary. I grew up in a family where we had money, didn't have money, had it again, didn't have it for awhile, then had it again, etc. It was always up and down financially. We were never poverty-stricken, and we were never filthy rich. But none of that mattered to me, because all I ever wanted in the world was to be happy. To me, happiness is the true measure of success.

In the late 1980s, there was a book called "Do What You Love; The Money Will Follow." A lot of people I knew were reading it. I could have written it myself. The title is exactly what I believe, and it describes me and my life. I do what I love, and money does, in fact, follow. I may not be rich, but I have never been unemployed for more than a couple days. Even during my darkest times when I was seriously injured and ill for several years – even living in my car for eight weeks while ill – I still managed to keep working and support myself doing what I loved:  writing and art, along with occasional other business pursuits that allowed me to write, illustrate, and publish.

Do I ever struggle with money? Well, yeah, of course I do. Everyone does from time to time. But that doesn't mean I'm unsuccessful. I have excellent relationships with all my family members and friends. I married a wonderful, loving man. I still work, and love it at the age of 73. And I encourage everyone to never give up, and to follow your dream to a happy life, with or without a large income.

10/13/2023: Spirituality versus Religion

I am not a religious person. I am a spiritual person. When anyone asks me if I believe in God, I say no, but without explanation. I don't want to have to explain that I don't believe in their god in the same way that I don't believe in any other supernatural beings – gods, angels, devils, etc. To me, that's the same as believing in fairies, leprechauns, and unicorns. Those are all ancient mythologies of primitive peoples throughout the world who needed explanations for the things around them, how they came to be, and what happened to you after you died.

The ancient Egyptians alone had more than 1,000 different gods for everything imaginable in their daily lives. All of today's religions – Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and others – are cults. A cult is simply a group of people who share common religious beliefs that are usually directed towards a person or a god, or at the very least, a system of beliefs. The word "cult" is a Latin word meaning "worship." While we have many different religious cults, we unfortunately also have the cult of personality, in which people worship a living person far more than they worship their god, often straying from their basic religious beliefs and embracing those of cult leaders such as a David Koresh and a Jim Jones. Fortunately, those kinds of religious fanatics are few and far between.

The top five largest religions in the world by population are Christianity, Islam, Agnostic/Athiest, Hinduism, and Buddhism. It's hard for many people to believe, but these five are far more alike spiritually than they are different. We are all on the same page … most of the time.

The earliest Christians were originally Jews. Both cults believed in the same God and had various sects within their religions. Among the original Judeo-Christian sects, the Jews did not believe in the divinity of Jesus. They didn't believe he was the son of God, but was instead a prophet. So, during the early 4th century AD, the Christians and Jews parted company and went their own religious ways. But they still share to this day the five books of the Torah, also known as the Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. 

In the 7th century AD, Islam also grew out of the Judeo-Christian religions. It has two main sects, Sunni and Shiite. Muslims revere and believe some of the material found in the Torah and the Bible, and they respect some of the same Judeo-Christian prophets, including Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. But, Muslims believe many of these writings have been corrupted by man, and so they believe that the Koran (Qur'an) is the uncorrupted version.

What does all this have to do with spirituality? Spirituality used to be synonymous with being religious, but nowadays it is distinct from being religious only in its separation from a god belief. I consider myself spiritual because I believe in being a good, kind, loving person, accepting and caring about all other people, caring about nature, the environment, the planet, animals. These are supposed to be the same values that a religious person would embrace. And most do, but there is a growing number of self-described religious people who seem to have missed the boat on spirituality. They seem to have lapsed into a highly negative and hateful disposition that I'm pretty sure Jesus would find non-Christian and Mohammed would find non-Islamic.

In reality, I don't care what other people believe. While I call myself "spiritual but not religious," it is probably a little more accurate to say that I am an agnostic. I believe that no one can ever justify the existence of a god any more than they can the non-existence of a god. So, you want to believe in a god and go to church every Sunday? Go right ahead. I'm not going to try to stop you and I'm not going to shun you because we don't believe in the same thing. I am far more interested in how well you live your life, how well you treat other people, how well you treat animals and the planet. That, to me, is the measure of your spirituality.

So be a good person because your religion tells you to. But for me, I will be a good person without the guidance from a god or a church leader. I will continue to love people of all races, sexual orientation, and religious beliefs, whether those beliefs be Christianity, Judaism, Islam or any other religion. I'm not going to condemn an entire race or religion or whatever just because of the actions of a select few lunatics. And I encourage everyone else to do the same. We are one world. ONE WORLD! And we need to rally our spiritual sides and start to accept and love one another.

07/28/2023: Astrology and Me

I started studying astrology when I was 14 years old. My father had a long-time interest in it and knew quite a bit about it. He had about a dozen astrology books that he gave me, including the works of Charles C.E.O. Carter, one of the great astrologers and writers of his time. Unfortunately, my father didn't know his own birth time, and his mother, for some strange reason known only to her, would not tell him. The time was not on his birth certificate.

Now, in most cases, when someone doesn't have their birth time, this doesn't prevent them from being able to do at least partial chart interpretations. But my father was born on a day when the signs changed for both his sun and moon. This means that technically he could have been a Pisces or an Aries, depending on what time he was born. This kind of drove him crazy, and it was this dilemma that triggered, in part, my initial interest in astrology.

Including the books my father gave me, I ultimately had my own library of more than 400 books on astrology. Many consisted mostly of charts and tables, but there were more than 100 that I actually had to read cover to cover. I couldn't understand how astrology could be so accurate, and I still don't. I just know that studying and practicing it for more than 50 years has proven to me time and time again that it works. But it's a very complex art and science. You have to understand all of the science, the mathematical calculations behind everything, the movement of the planets, etc. Then you have to learn the art of accurately interpreting everything. This is not as simple as it sounds because there are easily more than 800 things to interpret in any given chart. Most astrologers interpret only ten percent of those.

In the beginning, I learned how to erect a chart manually using tables and basic mathematical formulas. It was hard to do and was very time-consuming. And, it was never even 100% accurate. But then, around 1969 or so, I heard about a company in San Diego that did all kinds of astrological charts on a computer for accuracy within one degree of arc. I immediately started buying my charts from them. Many years later in the mid-1980s, I bought a professional astrology program for my computer, and it was equally accurate and was based on the software used by the company in San Diego. It was the Kepler program by Cosmic Patterns, which is a much upgraded program that I still use today.

I was naturally most interested in my own chart when I first started out with astrology. I had erected it myself but it took me forever, and I wasn't sure if it was accurate. As it turns out, when I bought a computer generated chart, I found out that the rising sign on the chart I did was off, and I was Cancer rising, not Gemini rising.

My chart very accurately reflects me and my personality, as well as my career, my interests, and my life in general. Cancer rising makes me appear trustworthy and amiable, but Uranus in the 1st house makes me also appear a little eccentric, which I am. My second house is empty, with its ruler, the Moon, in the 4th house, meaning my value system is good and I'm likely to work from home, which I do. Pluto is in the 3rd house which is good for in-depth research and writing. My 4th house has a Moon and Saturn conjunction, and that makes for an ability to live alone in a tidy house, but it can also make for sterility, and I was born sterile. Neptune is in my 5th house – the house of creativity – and since Neptune rules creativity this has been a good placement for me. My 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th houses are empty, and they have been uneventful houses, even in transit forecasts. My midheaven – the 10th house cusp – is Pisces, with the ruler, Neptune, in the 5th, meaning my career and life purpose are entirely wrapped up in creativity. With Jupiter in Pisces in the 10th house that creativity has the potential to be great. Jupiter also rules publishing, which has been the part of my career that I have enjoyed the most, as it allows me to tie together numerous creative pursuits. My Sun is in the 11th house and in the latter degrees of Aries, also called the critical degrees. This makes for a personality that could potentially become unstable at times. Since I once suffered a long nine-year bout of depression, that certainly fits. Also in the 11th house are Mars and Venus, both conjunct and in Taurus. These give me a lot of energy, especially in communicating, meaning that I can talk a blue streak, and I can assertively debate a subject while maintaining some degree of tact and diplomacy. Lastly, Venus is in Gemini in the 12th house. This is usually called the "da Vinci" aspect or the "Renaissance [wo]man" aspect. It is the sign of the polymath, and that is what I am. It also makes for fluency with language and with language in general, so that also fits with me since I have studied Spanish, French, Italian, and Latin. I am not as fluent in any of them as I once was – language is a "use it or lose it" proposition – but I can still read them all pretty well, and I also have some reading ability in Swedish.

While I enjoyed working on my own chart, I was also interested in the charts of other people and I was also interested in the prediction of earthquakes. I had been studying the astrology of earthquakes beginning around 1971, and I had always logged earthquakes I heard about, read about, or experienced in a notebook. When Cosmic Patterns' Kepler program became Windows-based in the early 1990s, I became one of their contributors when I provided them with my list of 2,400 earthquakes, including dates, times and epicenter coordinates, and it became a part of their research database. Shortly afterwards in 1994, I wrote a book called "The Astrological Prediction of Earthquakes and Seismic Data Collection," which I updated several times, most recently in 2020. This book basically explains the history of earthquake pre- diction and the reasons why it is impossible to accurately predict any kinds of natural disasters, but how so many astrologers forecast backwards after an event has already occurred in order to try to prove that it could have been predicted.

As for astrological consultations, I had attended the 1976 International Astrological Congress and took their exam – which was a lot harder than I expected – and became certified as a Professional Astrologer. It was shortly after this that I started doing astrology consultations. I put small ads in a little "new age" publication and had clients almost immediately – one was with me until her death in 2003. In later years I always had a web page for my services and I ran ads in new age periodicals and the phone book yellow pages.

In 1985, I began specializing in career and life purpose. To me, this was really the main focus of all my consultations anyway. No matter what was going on in a client's life, it was always the Midheaven of the chart that carried the most weight in their life, and that is where career and life purpose are located. If something isn't going well in that part of the chart, nothing else in life seems to work as well as it should.

I wrote a series of chart interpretations by house, sign, planet, and aspect that were specifically for career and life purpose but that also included other aspects of life as well. This was much easier for me to use and it enabled me to simply pull out the paragraphs that pertained to each very specific part of a natal chart. This resulted in very accurate interpretations that I could use in a face-to-face as well as a written consultation.

From about 1988 to 2002, I taught astrology off and on, mostly in new age bookstores, but also in a few adult education classes at community colleges. I was also the "resident" astrologer at two new age bookstores for a couple years. As of 2010, I stopped taking new astrology clients unless they come to me by referral. It was something I had been debating about for almost ten years. I had begun to realize that most astrology was becoming nothing more than a lot of Internet businesses run by people who didn't really have enough astrology knowledge and experience to fill a thimble. I didn't want to be lumped in with them, as they were just giving astrology a bad name in the long run.

Astrology is not brain surgery, but it's quite difficult to learn and to practice, so this dummying down of a complex practice really drives me crazy. It reduces astrology to "sun sign" astrology, in which only your sun is interpreted. So, if your sun is in Virgo, that is all that is interpreted. The sun is important, but it's not a stand-alone entity that dictates how your life will be. It's only important as it relates to and among the moon and planets in your chart and where they were and what houses they fell in at the time you were born. But "sun sign" astrology was exactly the kind of nonsense that Linda Goodman wrote about in her astrology books. It's easy to think you actually know something about astrology if you read her books, such as Linda Goodman's Sun Signs. But they are very far removed from the legitimate practice of astrology and they have done more to damage the use of astrology than anything else.

That's not just my opinion. Ask any professional astrologer. The same can be said for the astrologers who write "sun sign" horoscope columns in magazines, newspapers, and online. Nothing valid in them at all because they are written for only a person who is born in the middle of a sign and, because that person's other chart information is not available, no astrologer can ever make a valid prediction of how anyone's day is going to go.

When it comes to using astrology in my personal life, I look at my chart and the transits, etc., about once a month, maybe more often if something is going on into which I want some insight. But I don't run my daily life with it since astrology is really about when there are indications that it's a good/bad time to do something. In the end, as every professional astrologer knows, the individual always has free will. As has been said by many an astrologer : "The stars impel, they do not compel." How you live your life is based on the decisions and actions you take.

Besides astrology, I studied Wicca, palmistry, numerology, Tarot, I Ching, and runes. I see a lot of validity in some of the Wiccan spells, the intention behind them, in particular. It's pretty much the same thing as praying. Palmistry is somewhat linked to astrology as well as physical health, so that was interesting to me. Numerology was quite simplistic and I couldn't find anything in it that was accurate. Tarot, I Ching, and runes are interesting but rely on intuition. The problem is the randomness of drawing cards and other items and interpreting the results. Tarot is kind of entertaining, and I have read Tarot at many a party! But I'd rather do a psychometry (psychic) reading on a piece of jewelry or a photograph in an envelope, or something along those lines. I'm pretty good at that. But I've found that astrology is the best as far as accuracy goes.

05/17/2023: The Choices We Make

We define our lives by the choices we make. No matter what is going on in our lives or in the world at large, we always have choices. But choices are not always obvious to us, and so we often end up missing them altogether. Instead we feel stuck in a rut, unable to change our lives. I can definitely relate. It rarely happens to me now because I'm used to seeing all the choices available in my life and acting on the ones that best suit my needs. But it wasn't always that self-aware.

I started out by not making what was probably the right choice. The alternate choice I made had a far-reaching effect on my life. I was in my senior year of high school. My father was pressuring me to go to college and become a teacher. But I had just completed nine years of private art instruction. My teenage dream, my fantasy, was to study painting and photography at the San Francisco Art Institute, then move to Paris and live happily ever after, making paintings and photographs, and maybe eventually owning an art gallery.

But my father said he wouldn't pay for the Art Institute and wanted me to pick a regular four-year college. So, I applied to Cal State Hayward (now East Bay), UC Berkeley, and San Jose State University. I was accepted at all three, but my father was paying and he opted for the least expensive, which was Cal State Hayward. I remained at home, working to pay my own tuition and school expenses for three semesters at the local community college, before I transferred to Cal State. End of dream.

What on earth was I thinking? Well, apparently I wasn't really thinking at all. I didn't even know there were scholarships and financial aid that could have helped me make it on my own at the Art Institute. I didn't know I had choices. Even after I left Cal State, I still didn't know I had choices. I thought I had to follow in the paths of other women my age, to get married, raise a family, etc. Paris was … so far away…

As luck would have it, a giant change was forced upon me in the form of a major automobile accident. And what did I do? I again made bad choices. I picked the wrong lawyer, the wrong doctors, the wrong roommate … the list is so very, very long. But ya know what? I learned my lesson! At last, I came out of a horrible situation by making the choice to make changes. I abandoned my crappy lawyer, I found a part-time job with flexible hours, and after living in my car for eight weeks I rented a tiny studio apartment.

From that point on, I made the conscious decision to take charge of my life, to not rely solely on the advice of others, but to think critically and independently about the options I have, and to make sound choices based on the best options for my life.

I went on to start my own businesses to suit my personality, my skills, my interests, my financial needs, etc. I never looked back. Today, I'm no longer afraid to make a change, to start over, to abandon what doesn't work in favor of something better that does. No matter what problems I face, I don't freak out about them. Instead, I think about what my options are and make my choices to change. And, I encourage others to do the same. It's so easy to become a victim of our own ignorance or indecision. But we always have choices, even if they aren't obvious ones. Even if we're scared to make those choices. Even the hard ones. But the choice to change is one of life's greatest rewards!

04/16/2022: Living in the Now

I am so tired of social media posts about how sad it is that they don't teach cursive handwriting in school anymore, and what a shame it is that kids don't dress up for school anymore, and blah, blah, blah. Wake up people! Times change and things change. Nothing sad about that. I don't want to get stuck "back there" with these people who are constantly mourning the passage of time, or worse yet, trying to politically revert to a past era. You can't live in the past and you don't want to get trapped in the nostalgic idea that those were the good old days, because they were anything but. Read a current history book and it will open your eyes.

Despite the many horrors that continue to besiege the world, we are still better off than we have been. We are living the good old days RIGHT NOW. Every day is a gift, and it's a potential good old day in the making. If you put your effort into recapturing the past and reliving it, you won't be able to enjoy what's right in front of you today. And I find something to enjoy in every single day. I'm fine with talking about the past, but I don't want to live in it or go around wishing it was the quaint old Victorian era (which was not all that great, especially for women, but has been glamorized in TV and movies), or that it was 1968 again (I was there, it was a fun time, but I don't need a re-run of it). And there has been plenty of good music since the 1950s and 60s (but you have to search for it). So I have no complaints about TODAY. I'm happy right where I am, whenever NOW is.

And, I especially wouldn't want to be 15 or 25 or 35 again – although I wouldn't mind having the body of a 25 year-old again! Life is so much easier as you get older. You know who and what you are. You know what you want out of life. You've (hopefully) learned from your mistakes. You know what's important, what really matters. You've got your priorities straight. And you have the best understanding of how the world works. And there's always something new happening to learn about and enjoy. We are where we are today because of the PAST. But we should be living in the NOW, living for TODAY and embracing the promise of TOMORROW. If you don't like your life, CHANGE IT NOW!

01/11/2022: Doing the Right Thing

I have a few basic philosophies that form the central basis for everything I do in life: be kind, be honest, keep an open mind, and always do the right thing. The first three parts are not difficult to adhere to. Doing the right thing is another story.

I could write a book about what it's like to live your life always doing the right thing, or at least trying to do so. It can be, at times, extremely challenging. It means doing things that are very often far outside of one's comfort zone, of what is considered acceptable or popular; doing things that can force you to take risks and make significant personal sacrifices; doing things that may impact on those in your family or circle of friends; and doing things that may even cause you physical, financial, and/or emotional loss or harm.

For me, doing the right thing is often a matter of speaking my mind, and in most cases I sometimes feel that when I do, I'm the only one who is acting as a voice of reason. And being able to divorce your emotions from a situation and look at it from both sides and try to bring peace or understanding to a misunderstanding or conflict can be essential. Over the years, I have written many short articles and letters to the editor, trying to stop people from acting like idiots and see the reality of a situation.

I'm especially driven to support animal rights and the rights of all human beings – including people of various ethnicities, religions, gender preference, homeless, mentally ill, etc. So, when I see that someone has been arrested for mistreating an animal, I see red, and I want that person ordered to therapy and/or in jail and at the very least prohibited from having an animal again. And when it comes to homeless people, I have tried repeatedly to explain who these people are and the multitude of reasons why they are living on the street. I also try to define terms, when people take things out of context or try to make something fit in a category where it probably doesn't belong. I think that taking action against wrong-doing of any kind is important, and for me that mainly means speaking up and speaking out in defense of those who can't or are afraid to speak up for themselves. Being a writer has been a great platform in which I can do this, can do the right thing.

So why live that way? Because it means acting for the greater good, even if it's only in a small way, because sometimes the smallest of actions makes the biggest difference for those who are not otherwise getting the help and support they need in this world. Doing the right thing is difficult, and it can really rub people the wrong way at times. But it is also easy, mainly because you simply know it's right and you are in a position to do it. And, after all is said and done, there is a very big upside to this entire philosophy: I always go to bed at night with a clear and clean, guilt-free conscience.

03/27/2021: Ghosts and Spirits

I have always believed that we are all spirits living in material bodies. But, I never believed in ghosts. To me, they were just these make-believe things in stories, in movies, and on TV. All that changed in 1971. That was when I had an experience that forever changed my mind. I even wrote about it in one of my novels, "Shades," in which I attributed it to my main character, a ghost hunter. So here's my own personal ghost story.

I was with my friend Kathy in a small town on the outskirts of Sacramento. We were both into photography, and I never went anywhere without a camera. Kathy and I saw a lot of old abandoned farmhouses as we entered the small town. We decided to shoot photos of them early the following morning.

We took a lot of photos of the exterior of one house, an old barn behind it, and a pond bordered by cattails and other reedy plants. It was a very misty morning with low ground fog that began to disappear as the sun rose higher in the sky. It was all very beautiful and mystical. But I wanted to go inside and the front door was missing. Kathy warned me not to go in because she (and I) thought the floors might be unstable. But I was only 20 years old and apparently dumb as dirt, since I decided to brave the rotted wood and enter. I loaded up a fresh roll of 36 exposures, and Kathy sat down on a big rock and smoked a cigarette, thinking I was crazy.

The house had obviously been abandoned for a very, very long time. There were weeds growing out of the window frames and door jambs. The floors were covered in a deep carpet of dead leaves and other assorted dirt and animal excrement. But I was undaunted. I started up a creaky staircase and was momentarily startled when about a dozen pigeons flew out at me as they escaped from their roost upstairs. There were three bedrooms and one of them had a window that overlooked the pond. I saw that as an opportunity for some shots of the pond from above.

I entered the bedroom and it was the only room with a piece of furniture in it. An old rusty metal bed frame with naked box springs was sitting in a corner. I took photos of the room itself and of the window, with its broken glass, worm holes in the wood, lace curtain remnants, spider webs (complete with their occupants), torn and peeling wall paper, and of the pond, the latter including a few shots framed by the window.

As I finished my roll of film, I heard a strong but whispery voice say "Leave!" I felt a chill throughout my entire body. I immediately thought the owner had showed up to shoo me off his property. But then the voice spoke slowly and louder: "My house!" It was coming from behind me, from the bed. I spun around and saw a gray miasma that was the figure of an old man sitting up in the bed. He had a long, scraggly, gray beard and his face was riddled with a road map of deep wrinkles. He appeared to be wearing long underwear, a much-worn union suit. His face and torso were the clearest and most visible, and the rest of his body faded out into a clear but rippling mist. He spoke again, even louder: "Leave now!" – and I did.

I didn't run out of the house, but my adrenalin rush made me felt like I could possibly fly out like the pigeons did. When I saw Kathy, I didn't tell her what I saw. She was a nice young woman but she was also very close-minded about some things. I never looked back and never told anyone the story until many, many years later. And I never saw a ghost again. Once was probably quite enough.

I titled this article "Ghosts & Spirits" because I also had an interesting, if not spiritual experience, on the morning my mother died. She died early in the morning at home in Monterey. I was living in Venice Beach in southern California at the time. I woke up at 7:00 a.m. and sat up on the edge of my bed. I heard the sound of someone softly calling my name. I turned to face the foot of my bed, and there was my mother's best friend standing there, a semi-transparent figure. She said, in her Oklahoma accent, "Your mother just passed away." And then she instantly faded away, and she died just a month after my mother did, also from cancer. I thought I was just losing my mind, but about fifteen minutes later, my father called to tell my mother had died at 7:00 a.m.

So, you see, I believe we are all capable of existence without our bodies and even while we live within them. Why? How? I don't know. But these are only two experiences that convince me that we are all spiritual beings.

03/02/2021: My Spiritual Path

I am not a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, or a member of any religion. I was baptized Lutheran, then converted by my parents to Catholicism when I was about six years old. But by the time I was a teenager, I had read several books about religions and about the comparisons between and among them. I was also reading histories that covered the many wars waged by various religions against each other.

Religion was making less and less sense to me as I read. My conclusion was (and still is) that history should have taught us that organized religions are the bane of human existence. Look at all the hatred, persecution, violence, and wars that have been perpetrated on others due to organized religions and their leaders trying to force their beliefs on others, or struggling to keep other religious groups from co-existing with theirs.

There have been literally hundreds of religious wars. You can go back to ancient times, when the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten tried to force his new monotheistic religion on people who, for thousands of years, had been adhering to a complex religion replete with more than 1,000 gods that governed almost every aspect of daily life. Despite his heavy-handed tactics, he was unsuccessful at forcing a conversion, because when he died the Egyptians went right back to practicing their previous beliefs.

Then you have the Crusades from 1095-1481. That's roughly 1.5 million deaths. In the 16th and 17th centuries, you've got wars in Europe in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, including wars between Catholics and Protestants, and during the 16th century you've got wars started by Martin Luther's followers that resulted in 100,000 dead, and in Antwerp 6,000 dead when Catholic Spain sacked the Calvinist city. From 1524 to 1658, there were more than 6,000,000 people killed in religious wars in Europe alone, either due to battles or as a result of famine and disease due to war. Some estimates of these death tolls are far higher.

Add to all of this the Inquisition (approximately 5,000 sentenced to death); the Holocaust (at least 4,000,000 Jewish deaths plus 2,700,000 deaths of Christian Poles); and the wars in Ireland and North Ireland (often disputed as sectarian rather than religious). And there are many, many, many other such religious wars. And if you add in ethnic cleansing and genocide, both of which, more often than not have some degree of religious underpinnings, you're looking at close to a billion deaths.

I fail to see how so many religions could purport to believe in all these great gods and living a godly life, while finding it perfectly acceptable to go out and kill people who didn't believe as they did. I understand that a lot of it is due to state religions, but either way, these religious zealots seem incapable of living in peace.

I believe in total acceptance of any religions. Tolerance is not enough. I still find it offensive to listen to so-called "born again" Christians describing how Jesus is their savior and yet they treat people like dirt. I have read the entire Christian Bible, both Old and New Testaments, and so I know about Jesus and what Jesus taught, and while I don't believe he is the son of a god, I do believe he was a virtuous and well-intentioned man who taught many important lessons to his followers. How could someone claim to be a Christian and not even try to be Christ-like?

I experimented with various religions in the early part of my life. I joined different churches and tried to see if someone could somehow convince me that there was a god or that their religion had something to offer that I could not get anywhere else or in any other way. I found the Unitarians to be the best, but they were inconsistent in their beliefs and teachings according to which one of their churches you attended. I found the Mormons and Baptists to be suffocating, and the Episcopalians to be way too similar to Catholics. However, in the early 1980s, I was invited by a friend to attend services at St. Augustine's in Santa Monica, and I attended that church off and on for about two years because I very much enjoyed the inspirational and uplifting sermons of the late Episcopalian minister and author Malcolm Boyd.

It would be a lot easier to say what I believed in if I could simply attach those beliefs to a particular religion, but I can't. I'm a gleaner. I see good in the teachings of Jesus and Buddha, but I don't believe in organized religion at all. And as a teenager, I began looking outside of religion for answers, and came up with a variety of books that have influenced me ever since. My quest to shape my beliefs began at this early time of my life when I was first trying to figure out the world.

By the time I was 16, I believed most strongly in the power of the mind and of positive thinking, so I read "The Power of Positive Thinking" by Norman Vincent Peale. This book was about 50% useful and the rest was utter hogwash – positive thinking taken to an extreme that any rational human being would not find normal or healthy. Then I became interested in meditation, and so I read "The Autobiography of a Yogi" by Paramahansa Yogananda, which in turn led me to read "Science of Being and Art of Living: Transcendental Meditation" by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Because I believed strongly in the power of the mind over the body, I delved into Christian Science, reading Mary Baker Eddy's book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." I found it believable and tenable in many ways, but not in those that involved a belief in a god.

Then I got interested in the Rosicrucians. I probably studied more about their teachings than any other philosophy or religion. I read most of their books, and while I didn't join – I rarely join anything – I found it the most interesting of anything I'd ever read, and it drove me to learn more about the esoteric teachings of the ancient world. But it didn't really do anything for me in terms of helping me improve or better understand myself and the world.

My next step was reading two books by Dale Carnegie: "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living" and "How to Win Friends and Influence People." His primary theory was that you could change the behavior of others by changing your own behavior towards them. I agreed completely with that and still do when it comes to business relationships, but it tends to fall apart when it comes to close personal relationships. I also briefly studied Theosophy but found it to be derivative of so many other theories, in particular Buddhism. Then I read several books by L. Ron Hubbard on Dianetics and Scientology, and found most of them to also be derivatives of a variety of other beliefs, even though I agreed with most of what he wrote.

So, these days, when someone asks me what my religion is, I always respond that I'm a spiritual agnostic. I believe that we are all connected on a subconscious level, and that we may not know what the glue is that is holding us together, but that it is there nevertheless. I believe we do not have souls, but rather that we are souls, spirits inhabiting biological bodies. I also believe in reincarnation, and I hope I lead a good enough life that I don't come back as a cockroach!