1c h aP t e r 2
T
he few years preceding my profound Kundalini awakening
were spent in Eugene, Oregon where I found myself on a
spiritual roller coaster of sorts—a wild ride between revela-
tion to desperation, and everything in between.
I moved there in the spring of 199 from my native Northern Cali-
fornia. I spent the first few months sharing a house with three stu-
dents, doing odd jobs and yard work to pay the bills. Later, I moved
out of the shared house to save on rent. I ended up living temporarily
on a friend’s lawn in my tent for the rest of the summer, figuring to
find my own place to live as fall and the rainy season approached.
I originally moved to Eugene with the intention of going to the
University of Oregon to continue my college education once I’d es-
tablished Oregon residency. I’d spent two years previously going to
school at the University of Alaska—another one of my spontaneous
impulses that I’d chosen to follow for the adventure as much as any-
thing else. But I never did quite make it back to school in Eugene. The
intellectual pursuit simply lost its relevance for the time, as I yearned
instead to understand the nature of my soul.
For reasons beyond my understanding, I found myself compelled
by gut feelings to dig deep down inside my consciousness and ex-
amine whatever I might find there. In so doing, I seemed to connect
with a part of myself that knew instinctively how to release my vari-
ous societal repressions and heal my childhood traumas. I didn’t fully
comprehend at the time what I was doing in my quest for inner heal-
ing—I just did whatever seemed to help my mind break free from its
self-imposed constraints—whatever helped me to understand who
I really was, beneath my societal projections and restrictions. It was