Dear Reader,

We are pleased to present a diverse collection of stories about the life of the soul.  Each one reflects an aspect of the higher Self emerging into awareness: the inner voice that guides, an event that triggers a search for meaning, the unfolding relationship between personality and soul, the realization that we’re here for a purpose, the triumph over the lower self, the struggle to live as a soul in the world.  Together these stories paint a picture of the process of learning to recognize, respond to, and express the eternal Self as it manifests here and now.

We will welcome any comments you wish to leave in the contact form on the Home Page.

NWOL Coordinators

It was the mid 1990’s. After an unsuccessful year of attempting to start a business consulting practice from scratch, I had decided to accept ‘let’s work together’ overtures from a distant acquaintance. The two of us were as different as night and day. She was ‘artsy,’ ‘touchy-feely,’ go with the flow. For her, all things fell into the category of experiential creativity. I was the MBA corporate ‘wonk’—structure, goals, Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), quality control, and results. She was the heart and I was the brain.

Twenty years ago, I awoke with this poem in my mind and a sense that I had been working on it with someone in my dream. There was also some kind of perceived “Light” involved.

As poems go this poem is not a masterpiece. It is simple and full of hope and love. But, such as it is, I take no credit for having written it. I am the furthest thing from a poet. I’ve never known where it came from, or why it was given to me.

I was in my late 30s, having just left a corporate “power” position. Not knowing how to do anything other than ‘be busy,’ I hurried to set up an office in my home. New laptop computer, new printer, impressive new desk and, of course, the proper desk chair to go along with it; readying myself to start my new “power consulting practice.”

While sitting in my perfectly furnished new office, absent other people with their interactions/interruptions, voices, computers typing, emails to answer, phones ringing, meetings, and stress-filled calendar, the silence set in, and this is when things really began to happen.

I grew up in the U.S. during the Cold War. My parents were terrified when the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1959. My father, who was in show business, trembled in the shadows of Eugene McCarthy’s communist witch-hunts. As a 10-year old, I thought the world would end with the Cuban Missile crisis in a holocaust of mushroom clouds. In school, we were required to chant, “Better Dead than Red!” We had “drop drills” where we huddled under our desks while the class monitor bravely closed the venetian blinds, ostensibly to protect us from a cyclone of nuclear fire. I was taught as a child to regard all Russians with fear and loathing…

Long ago, before there were video games and internet, children played games with each other outside—hopscotch, hide and go seek, jacks and guessing games. We ran races and competed to see who could jump the farthest, or if we lived in the city, we competed to see how many steps you could jump without injuring yourself. So what, it didn’t matter if you bit off more than you could chew and busted your knee. It was all in good fun, you would make it next time.

This is what scientists say about the brain of the adolescent or teenager: Adolescents differ from adults in the way they behave, solve problems, and make decisions. There is a biological explanation for this difference…

…Other changes in the brain during adolescence include a rapid increase in the connections between the brain cells and making the brain pathways more effective.

This statement addresses only the brain of the adolescent: the being who has not yet connected to the soul. Listen to the thoughts of an adolescent who has connected with the soul.

It’s such fun looking at old photographs of the family. Re-remembering birthdays, family outings and such. It is especially interesting to see photos of ourselves when we were babies, attempting to remember ourselves then. I looked at this one picture where I was in a highchair. A hand—my mother’s hand—was holding my right arm and shoulder, keeping me upright and I was immediately back there.

When I was around 5 years old my father read me a story about Jesus. We were not a religious family, but it was close to Easter and we usually observed the higher meaning of the more important holidays by reading traditional stories. I was incredibly touched by the story. I don’t remember the specifics of it now, but I recall that it inspired me to draw a picture that I could give to Jesus as a gift to show him how much I loved him.

I’m looking into a big black void. This blackness extends forever in all directions. It’s overwhelming. I feel fear. It’s visceral in my body, constricting my chest. The Unknown. A black, black Unknown.

“Open into it,” a Voice says.

“No way,” I reply. “I’ll die if I go in there.”

“Open into it,” the Voice repeats.

When I was 17, I joined some friends to watch the Academy Awards. Driving home at midnight, my car broke down in the middle of an abandoned intersection in an industrial district in Hollywood. A car pulled up behind me and pushed my car to safety. A man got out and said, “Pop the hood; I’ll see what’s wrong.” He fiddled with the engine for a while, then declared, “You’re out of transmission fluid. Hop in and I’ll take you to an all-night Pep Boys” [an auto supply store].

It was at the end of the fifties, and I was about four years old. I was out of the house on the paved road where every day I met my friends who were of the same age, to play. In those years the greatest danger in the streets were the flocks of sheep, which crossed the country roads to go from one pasture to another. For us children it was fun to watch them pass, but it was more fun playing with the balls of excrement left by them on the road. Another game we enjoyed was racing with our metal tricycles.

I incarnated into a wonderful family as a first-born child in the United States early in the 1940’s. My upbringing was quite normal for that era, with good, nurturing, open-minded parents. My father, in particular, always encouraged my young mind to wonder, to explore the big questions—like the nature of God.

I see now that the soul was active in my early life, selecting the setting in which I would receive the foundations for later life, although I was not consciously aware of this at that time.

In my mid-thirties, I experienced a series of events in my personal life that propelled me into a crisis. I became desperately unhappy and felt lost and confused…

After a thirty-five-year “pause,” the urge to pick up the cello became so strong that I purchased one. Thus began a 7-year relationship with my “new teacher.”

Oh, how the lessons flowed.

“This is a ‘c’ note – not that!” (when my finger is a micro-fraction too far forward or backward). This teacher was relentless. Only when I achieved the goal did it reward me—no ‘namby-pamby’ coddling from this teacher. Only when the goal was precisely reached was the reward given.
Hours and hours of practice ensued, along with finding the perfect instructor and a better instrument. Much ground was gained through effort and persistence…

The most beautiful lessons I have learned are deposited and well-guarded in the private archives of my consciousness.

I used to be angry, furious, stubborn, firm and unyielding in my atavistic convictions.
My “beliefs.” An entire book could be written about this word, a stupid word that often keeps even the brightest minds on the planet ‘in stand-by,’ and whose mention makes me feel disgust.

I was in that age of passage defined by all as the most beautiful, and well described by the mobility of the lively and restless mercury: adolescence. The same passage where most of humanity is today…