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c h aP t e r 3

W

ithin the first few weeks of moving into the Pearl Hill
House, as it was called, I had a number of powerful spiri-
tual experiences in rapid, unsettling succession.
The first occurred on a Thursday night at the end of my four-day
workweek. The previous few days had been difficult. I’d been see-
ing the unpleasant reality of human suffering all around me. I had
recently started the job delivering bread to local health food and gro-
cery stores and now spent eight hours a day driving around town in
a large delivery van, immersed in the aggression that people express
through their automobiles.
The modern world seemed, on some level, just outright crazy. It
continued to amaze me how complicated our technological lives had
become in our misguided efforts to simplify them. It seemed that the
real purpose of life had gotten overlooked somewhere along the way
in our unending quest for progress. I wasn’t altogether sure yet what
that real purpose was, but I felt certain that something intangible
yet fundamental to human existence was seriously lacking in the so-
called “civilized” society around me.
Wherever I went around town I would observe people, since that
was partly what made the job interesting. But instead of seeing only
the conscious, projected selves that people were revealing, I would
visualize instead their deeper spiritual and creative selves—that as-
pect of the soul that was yearning to break free from societal con-
straints, dissolve the barriers both within and without, and express
itself with honesty and power.
I couldn’t get this vision out of my head. It deeply distressed me
that spiritual evolution, far from being a sacred aspect of our lives,