A Little About Me and My Beginning the Spiritual Path

In trying to figure out how to begin this Blog it occurred to me that the best way would be to tell a little about me and the context in which I live my life and why I believe the way I do. Once I lay out that groundwork I will go into certain topics that have a certain appeal to me at that particular moment and further expand upon them. I don’t have any desire to tell others the right way to live their lives, nor am I trying to build up an organization of followers. I look upon my purpose more in the line of sharing my experience and what insights I have gained about how to live my life in a more successful manner.
I no longer judge a person by the normal symbols of success that he may have, but by the life he is living. Let me explain further. As I see it a person’s success is judged more by the love, joy and happiness that they are experiencing than by their material acquisitions and accomplishments. Not that there is anything wrong with carving out an empire or enjoying the finer things in life, but I realized that there were a lot of people that the world looked up to that were pretty miserable inside, and there was no way I would have traded with them.
I didn’t always think this way. I grew up envying the affluent and wanting what they had, yet, at the same time, hating them for our class differences. It looked like there were things I just couldn’t be, do or have in life because of this gulf. Then, a dear friend gave me a copy of Napoleon Hill’s book, Grow Rich With Peace of Mind, which spoke to me in a way that shook some of my core beliefs.
It was in 1969, I had been back from Vietnam for two years and mad at the world. I was married to my first wife, raising a family and working in Los Angeles. I devoured Hill’s book and got out of it that if I wanted peace of mind and the joys of life, I was going to have to change much of how I viewed, life, myself and others.
I had had mystical experiences during my childhood and a religious transformation while in Vietnam, but I had not done much as far as taking them to the next step of how to live a life in harmony with my highest good. It was Napoleon Hill’s works that were the first steps to opening up the doorway to Infinity for me.