Hi,

I just signed up a day or two ago and wanted to introduce myself. I hope you will forgive the length of this post. There is so much I want to share and understand with a group like this!

I am uncertain what is and is not the effect of K in my own life. I have a history of some interesting stuff so I'll share a bit of me, I would appreciate feedback on sorting some of this out.

When I was around 8 or so I had a very interesting experience in a seeming dream. I and my entire family were huddled in the kitchen on the floor beside the kitchen sink and counter, very frightened. The sink is at the window to outside. Outside there are these creatures that I know in the dream I know are aliens. Mind you this was back in '62 where most 8 year olds didn't hear about such. In the dream we are all being very quiet hoping not to be discovered. Even our thoughts are shut way down. There is a voice from outside, no more than a mere whisper. It says one word, "candlelight". When I hear this word it is like a brilliant search light has been turned on right in my face and is filling me and running through my body and totally ripping apart ever part of my being. I awoke sitting bold upright in bed with intense tingling goosebumpy to the nth power energy running up and down my body and feeling like every part of me had been totally electrified. I was shaking like crazy. Energy surges in me when I just remember it. I don't know what it was but I was always convinced afterward that I was fundamentally changed by this experience. My Mom said that up to around that age I was very happy-go-lucky. But afterward I became very serious, detached and a bit strange.

I was a strange child before this. I had a waking vision (ok aided by a bit of psychedelics) some years later of when I was no more than days or weeks old. Several adults were in the room. I was too young to have any words but I knew exactly what each one was thinking, feeling and going through. So much pain and confusion in them. So much of it unnecessary. So much frustration in me that I had no means to communicate or be of help. I was crying with frustration and enraged at being deprived of the power to do anything much and especially upset at being considered totally inept and nearly mindless by these poor adults. During this vision I went through learning to talk again. I experienced the word shape/sounds mixing in my mind with what I knew inside and outside and slowly fitting together. I experienced my own baby talk from inside and saw it for the experimental speaking and word learning it was. I remembered some of my baby talk words.

When I was 5 I was playing with one of those clothespins that are two pieces of wood held by a coiled spring. I was fascinated by it. I reached out with my mind and let my mind flow around all parts of it and especially flow all around and through the spring. I began to get knowledge of how this spring thing worked in some fashion. It was very intuitive. But when I understood the spring I also got intuition about the steel it was made of, the way steel was made, its elemental composition, its uses, the uses and properties of springs, tons of related physics material and more and more information flooding into my intuition until it spiraled out into a huge explosion of information pulling in the planet! My head exploded. I had forgotten about my body and sat down with a hard thump. I sat staring bug-eyed at the clothespin. If all of that was in a simple clothespin then what kind of world was I in and just what was "I" anyway?

When I was really young I would have terrifying vivid nightmares. In the worse of these I would be totally out-of-control hysterical in my sleep. There would be so much energy in me I felt like I was going to explode into billions of pieces. But just when I could take no more this being would lead me to a quiet and sort of dark room and talk to me. I can't remember his/her face or gender. But I remember the voice soothing me and attempting to calm me. Sometimes I was so keyed up I faught hard against the voice as if it was robbing me of my power. But many years later as an adult I realized that that voice was the voice I had come to speak in inside my own head. Many years later I found myself spontaneously going back to reach and heal and protect my younger self.

In early school years I had that ESP thing I think a lot of kids do. I would always know when someone was speaking about me and turn around and look straight at them. It seemed to be bad manners to do that or something so eventually I stopped. School was very strange. I felt like there was a war going on inside me that school was causing. A war between two ways of knowing. On the one hand I had a "fast knowing" where the answer was present or was pulled out of somewhere when a question was asked or I wanted to know something. On the other hand was the memorization and plodding but dependable logic that I was learning in school. I found it very frustrating that no one taught anything about the fast knowing. After a while I began to discount it in my own mind. I had learned too much slow knowing. Until the 9th or 10th grade I actually thought I was sort of dumb. All the stuff in school seemed terribly disjointed and incoherent. I thought there must be an overall logic and plan to it tht was obvious to everyone else but me. It was a great shock to find that there was no plan, except sometimes a plan to make sure there was no plan(!), and that all the plan I had painfully pieced together was my own invention!

Well, it turned out that those teachers telling me I was hugely bright and that if I tried "just that hard" I would have straight A's were telling the truth. But I was robbed of using my brightness and continually dumbed down on all levels by school. The worst of it was that I never learned to fully engage my strength or push its boundaries there. This is not the way to grow young minds and souls. Much of the way they taught seemeed so wrong-headed that it couldn't have been more designed to keep minds from blossoming.

I had two other big challenges. One, my father was the original Southern Baptist Deacon from Hell. Very controlling and emotionally and physically horrifically abusive. Also, very pyschic. I swear the man could pick up even the thought of rebellion or anger. So I learned to shut down my own mind and abilities early. When it comes to that my Mom is also intensely psychic. She has crystal clear dreams about the future. I was her first child. We raised each other as she was barely 19 when I was born. When we talk today my third eye often goes nuts. It feels like there is a communicaiton and power cable stretched between our ajna centers. We finish each other's sentences a lot.

My dad terrorized all of us kids and my mom. By the time I was 5 I knew with perfect clarity that I could either let go to all of the chaos and forces inside and outside and go "insane" and be institutionalized (if not killed) OR I could learn to control myself quite thoroughly, put a lot of me undercover and use my energy (and it felt like others available to me) to heal the scars as best I could. It was quite an existential lesson for a 5 year old.

My other huge challenge was that I was born transsexual. I knew from quite early on that I was female despite being born with the wrong body parts. Thankfully, around 10 years ago I got to "change sex", to align my body with my heart and soul. But that was another part of me I buried deep and fought with myself over. I shut down a lot of unrelated stuff because I was afraid that more openness, even with myself, would make it impossible to hide this deepest darkest secret any more.

I had some interesting religious experiences early. Conversations I used to have with God or some beings at a higher level. Of course the Baptists taught that God was some fearsome being that would throw me in hell if I didn't toe the line. But I never could buy that. That wasn't who I was talking to. After a while the fear messages leaked in and I shut down more. But I was quite precocious. I had a friend and sunday school teacher who was a very bright and open minded theology student when I was 9 or 10. We would talk about ESP and Rosicrucian teachings and what Christ was really about and general theology every moment we could steal. It didn't make any difference that I was so young. He was always amazed by that. For me it simply felt like there was finally a mind I could share with. Of course this made my father very jealous. It was a force telling me I was good and special rather than totally screwed up and sinful as he took every opportunity to remind me. He couldn't stand it. So he painted my friend Buddy as a pervert and moved us to a different church. Such a painfully little man.

I took every opportunity I could to argue philosophy and theology and spiritual things with everyone I could get my hands on. Which were precious few and not of great quality in my environment. One of my most cherished memories is of a much younger Jerry Falwell, who was only known as an evangelist in a couple of state circuits at the time, arguing with me for over an hour in front of a church class when I was around 12. At the end he was totally flustered and said "You are inspired directly by the devil if you aren't one yourself. No natural child can argue like you." (smile)

Finally I got very dissapointed with religion (such as I saw of it). I not only couldn't find any answers but those who were supposed to know didn't seem to have even asked most of the questions. By 14 or so I decided I was an atheist. I got pretty notorious in my Bible-belt school and community when I delivered a 3 hours seminar dismantling all the proofs and arguments for God. But my humanities teacher wasn't fooled, "You know, a child who puts this much energy into even arguing against religion is not at all un-religious - if anything, you are much more religious than most."

In my adolescence there weren't many psychic or K like experiences that I remember. But my basically mystical and meditative nature kept blossoming. I would spend lot of time just sitting quietly looking at the world and waiting for it to open its meaning to me. Not much occurred though. Somehow I was convinced that I had to hold myself carefully or my thoughts would be picked up by other people or influence them. I seemed to have a "loud mind". As a young child I was also afraid to think along certain lines like to imagine what might be outside a dark window. I had a deep conviction that my mind was more than capable of making me see whatever I imagined. And I had a dread that it might be capable of actually creating it. Throughout my life I've felt as if there are abilities within me that I do not yet trust myself to manifest. But even this suspicion was disowned "to keep me safe".

I noticed at some point that I could cure people of minor maladies. I would do it in sort of a strange way. I would in my mind transfer the malady to myself and then dissolve it within me. Since then I've heard that this isn't generally a very good idea. I also experimented with some Huna magic techniques I found a book on. Especially influencing the weather.

In the 10th grade or so I met this very interesting girl that I later married. She was very intensely psychic. A natural witch. For some reason throughout my life I have tended to have a lot of friends and lovers who were witches or mystics or Rosicrucians or some such. My intuition is that I provide some energy or anchor or balance for their own work. I don't know quite what that is. The young marriage didn't last long at all. Especially since the knowledge of my gender differences came roaring to the surface around that time (17-18). I wasn't ready to do anything about it. Hell, I was so socially inept and hyper-sensitive that I could barely stand to go into a store and buy a stick of gum! No way I was going to be standing out like that would require. And there was simply no place in Greensboro, NC at the time for a trannie to do her thing. The two I met there were representative of the problem. One was a flaming drag queen as that was the only public role there was for someone like us at the time. Even that was very dangerous just a couple of years after Stonewall. The other played house mom to a hippie house I lived in for a while. She almost never went out. I was too afraid to let either of them fully in on what was going on in me. So I buried it again for a while.

Growing up in the Vietnam era and seeing grotesque carnage on TV nearly every night as a teenager deeply taught me that there is something drastically wrong in the world. Like many I was called by the hippie movement. I believed that only a change of consciousness could possibly, somehow, make a difference. So I read my Leary, Alpert, Huxley, and dear Alan Watts. I became the Acid Queen for a few years. LSD allowed me to get inside my own psyche and rebuild and rewire a lot. It also showed me ranges of experience and of energy and being far beyond what I dreamed was possible. I spent many a night walking around the city and reaching into the homes and minds of the people within the area. I could feel them. I felt where they lived and had their being much of the time and it felt so very small and confining compared to being plugged into the universe the way I felt I was. Yet they had one another and their comfort and their security while I felt incredibly separate and alone. A cry went up inside me for others like me. I felt just a few and seemingly so far away.

I was a strange soul. I had friends at the time come up to me and poke me in the chest asking, "You really aren't in there are you?" And mostly I wasn't. This body seemed to be an incidental thing that somehow was supposed to represent me or even be me. It didn't feel that way.

I was with another woman who was a highly trained witch when I was 19-20. In many ways she was the deepest love of my life. Things she would say in casual conversation would come back to me filled to overflowing with levels of meaning I hadn't the wit to capture when she first said them. I never knew what she saw in me. She said that I brought her mind and heart peace and that she loved my brilliance and yearning. She was 6 months younger than me and yet much older at the same time. Much like me.

I eventually left Greensboro and came to San Francisco in the mid 70s. By that time I felt very battered. I felt I had hurt some people I had not wanted to and that I should be much more together and whole than I was. I wasn't sure anymore what was what I wanted to believe and what was and wasn't real and what was real that I was desperately avoiding believing. I was still very mystical but the seed of something different, a rationalism, had begun to take hold as I had read Ayn Rand the summer before. A good antidote to some shaky thinking but also very antithetical to the psychic part of my being. But by the time I got to SF this wasn't very sorted out.

I did a lot of just being in my room. Smoking pot and cigs too much, reading a lot of philosophy and mysticism. Trying to untangle the knots inside my being. I got very quiet and introspective. The one place I could bear to go to for a while was a local coffee-shop - fittingly called "The Sacred Grounds". Some of the people there befriended me and I always had a joint or two of "the good stuff" no matter how poor I was. But often I would just sit quietly at the table with them and listen. At some point the listening went much deeper. I began to feel and hear what was behind the words, then behind those things, then behind those... Down and down it went. It got spooky. Soon I knew what they were going to say and do long before it happened. Some of the psychic stuff I had buried came out and developed further. I would have dreams where someone I didn't know so well would be with me in the dream and tell me all about themselves. Later I would find that every bit of it was exactly true including things they had never shared with anyone. It got really spooky. I found I could do it with strangers on the street. Then I got scared and shut it down hard. I felt like I had too much baggage and was too apt to misuse such abilities and cause myself a lot more damage. I felt too inept to really use it to help.

But I had noticed for some years by then that I seemed to have some talents that were therapeutic to other people. I almost became a junior guru for a time. I had read everything I could get my hands on about mysticism and eastern religions and pop psychology for some time. I could sit with one person especially but also in groups and read them (although I didn't know that was what it was at the time). I could see right into them where their knots were. And I would weave a collage of hippie talk, mysticism, psychology to get them to see what was going on and to empower them to do something to help it. But it also felt like energy was going from me to them that was really doing the teaching and setting up the work. It was done almost automatically, as if something else was working through me. I kept shutting it down because I thought it was something from my ego or that my ego would foul up. And I couldn't understand why the people couldn't see for themselves.

This takes me up to about 22 years ago. Not long after this I decided that I had dabbled for long enough in the hippie and psuedo mystical world. I got fed up with my own ineptness and confusion. So I went hard the opposite direction. I went on a very rationalist, scientific spell. I started my computer career and poured almost all of my energy into it. For some 12 years I steered well clear of things magical and mystical as much as I could. I tried to explain all of it away. I am still burdened with a lot of doubts to this day.

Starting around the time of my transition all of the psychic, mystical, spiritual memories and experiences began coming back online. Being able to say yes to changing sex was actually saying YES to the Goddess on so many levels that I am still discovering. Saying "Yes" for the first time in a very long time. That began a lot of changes in me beyond the obvious ones.

I fell in love with a guy who happens to be a 11th grade Rosicrucian early on in transition. We became inseparable. One evening at his place I had this experience. It felt as if Infinite Love and great power was pressing into my back and wanting to flow through my heart to all of the world. It was such a palpable intense feeling. A feeling and a Deep Call to fulfill my purpose. I was afraid to let go to it and I am still afraid. I know it will change me utterly. And yet I know it is something I was put here for.

During transition I had a series of memories and experiences that brought me back to the reality of Spirit. I eventually became especially caught by A Course in Miracles. Which amazed me after my years as a rigid atheist or at least agnostic. ACIM is very much about living fully in Love. It spoke to me deeply. So much of it was what I thought God and Christ must really be about when I was 9 or 10 years old. But so very much more. I began to trust or at least to take faltering steps to trust. My old abilities came back but cleaned up a bit. The first time I went online psychically and felt the combined pains, hopes, fears, and loves of an entire city without drugs to hide behind was quite a mind-blower. I began to learn to simply let Goddess / Holy Spirit work through me and to have my ego stand out of the way consciously. Sometimes when I did this I would do and say things that weren't what I would call tactful or what I would think of at all. But somehow they were just the right thing, they were the miracle needed or made the opening for it.

Around this time I discovered a MCC (gay, lesbian and increasingly transgender supportive) church in my area that was strongly metaphysically oriented. I was afraid to go. I thought that if I ever set foot in a church after all of those years that either I would burst into flames or it would! But I noticed something very dear. I felt lines of force coming out of my heart and connecting to other hearts in the room. I was very surprised and overwhelmed. I had felt that part of heart energy in me for a long time but I didn't know quite what to do with it. Here at last was a place where it seemed naturally useful and appropriate. Soon I was teaching ACIM at the church and was a very loved member and leader. I began to believe that I had found my calling at last, that I was home. In front of a church taking part in leading meditations of my own design, prayers, consecrating and serving communion, I felt as if many lifetimes of knowledge just automatically kicked in. I connected to the spiritual energy of the church. I could feel the angel that was the church during communion.

Teaching ACIM was such a blessing. I felt so blessed to be part of the healing, opening and growth of souls! I watched people be reborn in front of my eyes. There is nothing better than that. One evening when I felt particular filled with Spirit one of the people in the course looked at me very strangely. When I asked him why he said that he had looked at me and instead of a person sitting there there was just this big egg-shaped mass of pure light with just a hint of human features. It was a very high and holy time. I became convinced that I was called to be a minister and that I should use my software goddess abilities only to pay off my debts and take care of my dependents quickly so I could go fulltime into my true work.

After a time though, I felt that I simply did not know nearly enough and had not done enough work on myself to be able to really do this work. Spirit was working through me but I knew how many doubts, fears, hangups and how much ignorance was in me. I knew I needed a lot of work. One place where I thought to get it was by learning a good formal meditation practice. So I asked to be led to what was needed. This took me to Ananda.

Ananda was started by a student of Paramahansa Yogananda many years ago. It teaches a westernized, householder Hindu yoga path. It particular uses Kriya meditation as its primary spiritual practice. As much as I loved MCC I knew I had just found a much (in most ways) deeper end of the spiritual pool. So naturally I just had to jump in!

There was a bit of a ticking time bomb. When I first entered their church I asked immediately to speak to a minister and asked to know whether I would be facing prejudice and extra barriers due to being a post-op transsexual and predominantly lesbian in sexuality. I told her that I was asking not to put her on the spot but because I knew deep within me that I would fall utterly in spiritual love with the teachings,practice and church and I wanted to know if it was a place where I would be ultimately jilted. She pretty much assured me there was nothing to worry about on that score but I felt an edge of something different. It was to turn out that there was a lot of prejudice toward me and mine there but that is another story.

I began to take classes and read every word Yogananda had every written including his massive and beutiful translation and commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. Soon I took discipleship vows. It was a bit of a challenge for me because as much as I loved Yogananda I wasn't sure if he was my guru. I had long taught of Christ in that role if anyone was. But I had a key dream that convinced me that he was indeed a guru to me and present no matter what I did. In January 97 I recieved Kriya initiation and the first Kriya technique.

I learned basic and more advanced meditation and began practicing for an hour and a half or more every day not counting other related practices. I felt like I was filled with energy and walking on air. I was having trouble integrating into my work-a-day life though. I began to have some intense flashbacks of what I believe are past lifes as a monastic. Both in Eastern and Western traditions. I had some incredibly intense lucid dreams. I will close this already too-long email by sharing one which shook me to my core 4 years ago.

The dream occurred not long before the time I would awaken. I had been practicing only simply breath watching (Hong-Sau) and some listening for the inner sounds type meditation regularly at this time. It was some months before I received Kriya. And I was engrossed reading Master's Gita.

In the dream I was older and a nun of many years practice. I am in some kind of small temple taking part in a ceremony. In the ceremony I simply was to go to the altar and light a candle with as full consciousness and devotion and as an act of deepest love of God. In the dream, after many, many years of practice my heart and mind is very clean and focused. As I walk forward I am inventorying my mind and heart and releasing each place where I am holding onto "me" or holding back in any way. I am systematically attempting to make of myself a pure offering to God. As I reach to light the candle I let go of the last of me and only pour out my love to God.

Suddenly I feel as if I have been turned completely inside out. The breath WHOOSHes out of me. My body crumples to the ground. I am caught up in and dissolved in the reality, in the Presence of God. Never have I felt such pure Power, Love, Knowing and deep endless boundless Joy. My entire life, all of my lives, all of the lives I could possibly have flash by before my inner eye. All of it is so incredibly tiny compared to the immensity that I find myself within. There is just enough of me to say over and over again, "My Lord, My God! I am yours, I am yours forever!" But a small part of me even then says "not yet, you're not ready yet but REMEMBER".

Afterward I awoke immediately as I usually do from this kind of dream. Tears poured down my face and I felt utterly spent. I prayed to God and thanked God and Guru for a very long time. For many months I was sure I was destined to be a nun. Inside I felt like one.

OK. I will stop for now. This should be more (probably much more) than enough to see what matter of strange creature comes before you. (g)

love,

samantha