Vol. 34 No. 18 - I AM the Witness

Vol. 34 No. 18 - I AM the Witness - May 5, 1991

I AM the Witness

On Easter Sunday 1980, I was visiting a friend in Portland, Oregon.

I had gone to Catholic grade school and high school and even four years of a Catholic college. I had always been a devout Catholic and I especially enjoyed reading the works of the Catholic mystics, as they seemed closest to the truth of God, for which I really hungered.

From the time I was in the eighth grade, I would pore over the works of St. Theresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, Teilhard de Chardin and others, really trying to figure out where I fit in to the whole picture. However, I was just about to the point of giving up the Catholic Church (and Christianity in general) because the Mass was feeling more and more lifeless to me and life seemed to be getting so much harder.

In fact, at the age of 27 I was at the point of desperation and, being an intense sort of person, I knew that if I could not find the real meaning of life and how I was supposed to contact God on this earth, I just wouldn’t want to live anymore. I knew the saints and the angels were real, but why had they stopped talking through the Catholic Church? Things seemed really hopeless.

I deeply loved Jesus. Although I used to talk to him a lot in my heart, I felt like someone was hiding the real Jesus from me. I remember even feeling angry at him for being the “only Son of God.” I used to say to him: “Dear Jesus, I do love you, but I just don’t see why God made you so special and me such a poor sinner. It just doesn’t seem fair and, you know, it makes me mad.” This ambivalence about Jesus was anguishing to my soul and nearly tore me apart.

At any rate, I decided to go to a beautiful Catholic grotto church that Easter Sunday to meditate on my love for Jesus and his resurrection and to ask him to please guide my way and help me to find something more meaningful in life. The Mass I attended seemed very dry and totally devoid of the Holy Spirit, and so I took the bus back to my friend’s house and went straight to the yellow pages and looked under “churches.”

I started crying and said to Jesus: “Look, Jesus, I’ve had it with the Catholic Church. I hate to be disobedient to you and your Church, but please show me somewhere I can be fed some real truth. This is a special day for you. Please pull some strings for me!”

And there it was–in tiny little print in the middle of five big pages of church listings–“Teachings of the Ascended Masters, the Portland Study Group.”

“Ascended Masters?” I said to myself. “Plural? You mean there is more than one person that has ascended like Jesus? I wonder what this is all about.”

So I picked up the phone and called the group and was invited over. I got out my map of Portland, figured out the bus routes, and twenty minutes later I walked into an old two-story house in Portland. The minute I set foot in the door, I felt like I had entered a time/space warp.

Things were very different in there. For one thing, the people had some type of clarity about them, and they didn’t seem to have the stuffy religious overtones I had grown to so dislike. The books looked beautiful and very fascinating. Someone showed me a picture of Mother, and I remember thinking how beautiful and young she was. The fact that she was a woman and also the leader of a church really made me happy.

And then I heard the decrees–WOW, what energy! I asked the lady I was talking to if I could go in the room where they were praying and do some of that myself. The chants sounded exhilarating to me and also somehow familiar, as I used to go out into the woods by myself and make up my own chants, giving them out loud. But she said they were very powerful and I would have to learn more before I was allowed to go into the chapel and give those fast decrees.

So I bought four or five books and then went back to my cabin in the mountains where I was living. I spent several months reading Climb the Highest Mountain and the other books and trying to understand what they were teaching. I finally decided there was something very special about all this and that I would push aside my fear of unusual religious “cults.” I got the phone number of the study group in the closest city, and the rest is history.

I went on to serve five years in a Teaching Center and five years on staff at the ranch. Although it often seemed difficult and truly like the “trial by fire,” I also had some of the most richly rewarding and deeply joyful experiences of my life.

Today I use my free time giving lectures on the Ascended Masters in a large city, trying to find my brothers and sisters out there in the concrete wilderness who may be as tormented as I was before I found the truth of the Great White Brotherhood and their loving Messengers, who bring us true progressive revelation from Jesus and many other magnificent beings as well.

But my story doesn’t stop here. The real punch line occurred five years after my 1980 Easter Sunday experience. It was Easter Sunday 1985 and I was attending a Sunday service at the Teaching Center where I was serving. The dictation that was chosen for that Easter was from Easter Sunday 1980. There I was, listening to Jesus’ dictation, when all of a sudden I heard him say something like: “And now I am cutting free certain souls who are tied to my heart and who are ready for a higher teaching!”

I started to cry and told Jesus in my heart: “O Jesus, it was YOU! I am really loved by you, and it was you who came to fetch me that Easter Sunday in Portland. What a miracle! Thank you so much for letting me hear about these wonderful Teachings.”

Let the fiat of the Lord Jesus Christ be with me all the days of my life. Amen!

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