Personal History
I've decided to post my very rough autobio.... It's very honest and a little scarry to put it out there like this but somehow I feel it is part of why I am here to let myself be known. Tomarrow I am attending an event with Saniel Bonder and Linda Groves-Bonder called the Force of Destiny.
I am currently working on their marketing team. The following weekend I hope to attend the retreat with Andrew Cohen at Ions.
What's interesting is their respective juxtopositions within me. As I write this I am having extremly intense energies running throughout my brain, maybe haveing to do with the fact I just got off a conference call with Saniel, Linda and other destiny attenders of tomarrow. See Andrew's recent blog More on this later......
A Short History of V. John Baker
I was born on March 21st, 1972 at 7:03am in Redwood City, California during the end of the Uranus-Pluto conjunction. For the astrologically inclined that makes me an Aries with Aries rising. I am born on the cusp, three minutes into the very beginning of the Zodiac. I am also born in the year of the Rat, which is the sign that begins the Chinese Zodiac. I think that’s kind of cool to be born on the very edge of the beginning and end. My mom told me that I was a rambunctious little kid who crawled around in everything. When I was six months old, I crawled out of my crib and fell into my diaper bucket. I nearly suffocated in my own shit.
My parents were both brilliant socialites. According to my half-sister Lisa, ten years my senior, they were the life of every party and consumed copious amounts of substances. My parents were divorced when I was a year old. My sister tells me she took care of me most of the time and I was constantly getting into everything. My mom wanted to give me up for adoption, but my aunt and uncle on my dad’s side took me in and raised me until the age of three. I finally crawled out of my crib at age two.
My aunt and uncle are good people and I am blessed to have had that time with them and have a few memories of happy times. I broke my collar bone at age two & remember splitting my head on the fire place as well. The circular movement from dark to light and back became a major theme for my life. I was told that I was to be adopted by them, but, my dad got married to what would turn out to be the wicked step-mother and he decided to take me away from my Aunt & Uncle.
Kathy, the wicked step-mom, abused me both physically and psychologically while my dad was mostly not around. I remember spending most of my time alone outside with my toys and my beautiful self-created fantasy world.
I loved going to Grandma and Grandpa Baker’s house. My grandmother was a school-teacher from Nebraska who taught grades K-8 in a rural town and played piano in the silent movies. She taught me all kinds of things and I fell in love with learning at an early age. Her first child, a boy, died three days after he was born. I believe this had a profound affect on the way she raised my father. She had three other children, two girls and a boy, my father, the youngest. My Aunt Barbara died the year I was born. My cousin Johnny was her son and four years my senior. He used to teach me to draw and is now an amazing guitarist. My grandfather was a great salesman with a big heart and used to play cars and Star Wars with me all the time. I have fond memories of my grandparents.
Dad, Kathy and I moved to Missouri before my half-brother Jason was born in 1976. I remember a lot of dreams I had from ages four on. They were filled with vampires and ghosts. I remember seeing glowing green skeletons in my closet and had dreams of female vampires that I was afraid of but I also wanted desperately for them to bite me. I would always go explore everywhere on my own and loved to crawl down in sewers, on top of roofs, and out in the wide wilderness. We moved back to California in 1977. I got stuck inside of a chimney I tried to go down at age five. The fire department had to cut a hole in the damper and I made the front page of the Napa Register.
Kathy loved Jason and hated me it seemed. The abuse from Kathy continued and I remember hitting my brother once when I was five and he was one. I felt so horrible when he cried that I never hit him again. I absolutely loved Kindergarten and couldn’t wait to go everyday. We moved a lot and I went to three different Kindergartens and two different first grades. I contemplated suicide and told my Dad I was going to run into the street to get run over. I started going to therapy at age five.
In 1978 Kathy and Dad split up, Kathy taking Jason back to Missouri. I lived with my Dad, but he was mostly not around so I would take care of myself most all the time, going to Catholic School in the first grade.
He got together with another lady, Reba. They had Reba’s daughter who was eleven watch me but she would try to get me in trouble by planting pictures that said “I hate Reba” in my room and then I would get spanked for lying that I didn’t do it. After a number of these incidents I burned her Barbie dolls and started stealing since I was a bad kid anyway.
They split because of me my Dad said and then I moved in with my grandparents while my Dad partied and worked and I saw him at times. My grandparents went to church and so did I. That’s when I fell in love with Jesus. I wanted to be Jesus. I felt so guilty though. I was stealing from stores around that time and getting into mischief. I remember Grandma telling me that Jesus would only forgive me so many times and I tried hard to be good but then I would mess up again. I prayed every night for forgiveness and was afraid I would go to Hell. I remember blessing everybody every night even Kathy who I wanted to love me.
I was given a kitten named Sandy that I loved. One day I swung Sandy around by her tail and beat her on the ground. Nobody ever found out but she was hurt really bad and I cried and cried. Since that day I only hurt one more creature, besides the occasional bug (I shot a bird with a BB gun when I was thirteen and held it in my hands as it died and I cried for hours). Today, I can’t even swat a mosquito.
Around this time I have the first memory of my real mom, Bonnie. I would go to visit her for a few weeks in Santa Rosa throughout the year. She lived on a big ranch and had several houses. I met my half sister Lisa, who was 19, and my cousins Mark and Kim who were my age and I loved to play with them. Mark and I are still close.
In 1980 my Dad bought a house in Napa and I went to live with him. He worked a lot and I was alone most of the time with a key to the house. I had some new friends that would play games and stuff. I had a baby sitter sometimes when my Dad was gone overnight. That same year Kathy and Jason moved back from Missouri and they were remarried.
I did pretty well in school, especially in math, due to my grandmother doing flash cards with me all the time. I fell in love with reading and writing in the 2nd grade. I started reading incessantly around this time. Dracula, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Littles, The Hobbit, Choose your Own Adventure, and then all kinds of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I also started playing Dungeons and Dragons and reading comic books. I would spend all of my free time in the library and book stores. I stole a lot of books and toys at the time as well. I also got an Atari 2600 and played a lot of video games. I especially remember the writings of Roger Zelazny. I also wrote a lot of fantasy stories.
I remember when the library got a computer and my friend had an Apple 2C. I started going to Christian school in the 4th grade and played computer games at the library. Socially I was cool with the boys and was average in sports but, I was really intimidated by the girls. I always had crushes on these girls but I was so shy and really needy when I would be around them.
I did well in school but got into trouble after school. I would steal money from my parents and stole a lot of things from stores. My brother and I got along well and I loved him very much but, I was really jealous of all of the attention Kathy gave him. I would of course receive the occasional beating. After I got my brother in trouble for stealing toys with me, the beatings got a lot worse.
In sixth grade I went to Catholic school since Kathy was Catholic and Jason went there as well. I really loved going to Mass and also the Baptist church with my Grandparents. It was at this time that I asked Jesus into my heart as my personal Savior. I tried really hard to be good and do the right things. I was so incredibly lonely and would pray a lot. It was this year that my Aunt & Uncle got me an IBM PCjr and I started to learn Basic and go onto BBS’s with my 300 baud modem.
One day, after a particularly intense beating I ran away to my mom’s house. It was during this time that my Dad and Kathy finalized a second divorce. While staying with my Mom I was enrolled in another Christian school. My mom was rarely around but when she was she was mean and demanding. She was a heavy drinker and it was during this time that I experimented with alcohol and cigarettes. It wasn’t long, six months, before my Mom said she couldn’t take care of me any more.
I went to live with my grandparents at this time. I switched schools again, but after a few months my Dad took me out of the Christian school when I got in trouble. Amazing enough through all of this I still did well in school and really loved to learn. In public school I did well and spent a lot of time on the computer. I had a few friends who were trouble makers and we used to skate board, steal stuff, and smoke marijuana.
I moved around so much that I never had much chance to get to know girls. It was during this time that my sex drive became very powerful. My dad used to hide magazines under his bed that I would look at and my Mom also had a collection as well. Neither of my parents said anything about sex so I learned from the magazines and in school a little.
My Grandfather died of colon cancer after about 6 months in and out of the hospital. That was 1985 and I moved once again to stay with my Mom when Grandpa fell ill. Again, my Mom was rarely around and when she would come back from her trips she was always upset about something I did or didn’t do. After a few months my Mom had had enough of me and so I went to live with my Dad and Grandma.
This was also my first year in High School. I did pretty well in school and then after school would go play computers, read or steal. That summer I got to go to a Seventh Day Adventist camp with my cousins. After camp I vowed that I would be good and try really hard. I prayed that God would take care of me.
That prayer would be answered in a way that I could not have predicted. My Dad had a party one night and I was really sad and lonely. I snuck into the kitchen and stole some of the pina coladas they were making. Then I went to wander around in the woods behind the house at night. I came to a neighbor’s house and decided it might be exciting to break into their house. I had a flashlight and I tried to open a window. Someone saw me and called the police. As it turned out going to Juvenile Hall was the best thing that could have happened to me.
My Dad came to get me but I refused to go home. They had me take some psychological tests and I made up answers. After 45 days in Juvie, I became a ward of the court and they sent me to a “residential treatment center”. It was 1987 and I was 15. This event would dramatically alter my life.
The place was called Family Life Center and it was in Petaluma, California. For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by people who actually seemed to care for my welfare. There was structure and the rules were very strict. I remember thinking it would be really easy. In some ways it was, but in other ways it was the hardest thing I have ever done.
There were a total of 21 boys there, twelve of which lived on campus and another 9 that lived in satellite homes and came to school from 9-4pm M-F. Everyday we had what they called “circle” where we would all sit together and we would work on issues. Sharing, anger work, confronting underground issues, cradling, & bringing yourself up for a phase change were some of the things we did during circle.
Daily we had our rooms to keep clean and indoor and outdoor cleaning periods. I had to rake the gravel driveway everyday for about 10 months. That’s also how long it took me to go from phase two to three. Each phase carried it’s privileges and it’s responsibilities. We had to do so many guided visualizations and a certain number of additional work hours during your free time in addition to working on your issues and behaving in order to move up phases.
We had no contact with parents except once a month and we got to go home for Thanksgiving and Christmas but we couldn’t stay overnight. We were expected to introspect and examine ourselves. Each phase had three key concepts that we were to meditate upon. Each phase also had certain requirements such as certain numbers of guided meditations, work projects, circular breathings, art therapy, and wilderness trips. We also had regular school each day from 10-3pm.
When you first enter the program we wrap a string around an arrow and we are supposed to meditate upon the words communication, listening, and resolution. We also are to take responsibility for why we are there and make the major commitments of no drugs or alcohol, no sex, no violence, threats of violence, or destruction of property, and no running away.
Phase three was about self-image, personal history, and exploration. It took me ten months to get it and I lost it a few months later for watching a rated R movie, looking at pornography and keeping it secret for a few weeks. I was assigned a lot of work hours and then I ran away for an evening.
When I came back I was in huge trouble and it took four months of disciplined work and effort before becoming phase three again. This is when I got to move off campus into a satellite home with five other boys.
Our parents were really amazing people that to this day I credit for opening both my mind and heart. They were both working on MFCC’s; Scott was 30 and Rachel, 26. They were both vegetarian and followed the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda. I read Autobiography of a Yogi, a bunch of Richard Bach, & The Way of the Peaceful Warrior around this time.
One of the other staff members was a Buddhist and I fell in love with Cat Stevens who I found out had converted to Islam. I developed a profound appreciation for the spiritual quest and felt drawn to Scott’s stories of satoris and began to contemplate enlightenment at age sixteen. I took up meditation and subscribed to the Self-Realization lessons while attending events and meditations with Scott and Rachel. I also became a vegetarian.
I still had plenty of issues to work on, and with phase three I began to have monthly therapy with my parents and got to go home for a day per month. As far as school went I got straight A’s and I was proud of the fact I taught myself Algebra 1 and 2 since our teacher didn't know math very well.
Phase Four was about responsibility, integrity, and connectedness. I began to take on a leadership/mentor role for the newer students. Art therapy exploration was amazing, and we got to go on hiking trips off trail with outward-bound staff members.
The program used a lot of Native American symbolism and on our wilderness trips I did a vision quest, and a twenty-four hour solo. Back on campus we had a medicine wheel, got to visit on reservations, and had a shaman come. I was chosen to have him give me a healing. I also explored and discovered my personal totems and made lasting connections with Horse and Tiger.
In Phase Five, we began to transition towards leaving FLC. We went through a work-training program and I got a job a Mervyn’s Department Store. During this time I developed a crush on a girl that I was in work-study with. She was a student at the other coed FLC campus. The key words for Phase Five were Interdependence, Humility, and Appreciation.
I graduated in January 1990 from both the program and high school. I was the twenty-first person to ever graduate the program since 1977. Many years later, I found out that the school was developed by Tibetan Buddhist students. FLC helped me transition into work and attending Santa Rosa Junior College. I was 17 when I started college. I had decided to become a Physics major. I was fascinated by science and wanted to figure out how and why everything was. I figured Physics could answer most anything and I was determined to figure out a Grand Unified Field Theory.
I began Shotokan Karate, took piano, and got straight A’s in college. I was also very lonely at times and would go through periods of intense depression. I had my first sexual experience at age 18. She was a co-worker, had a boyfriend and a child, and generally speaking, was not a good situation. When I told her I was done with the relationship, she informed me she was pregnant. It turned out to be a lie, but that scarred me tremendously.
It was with Kashya that I had my second sexual encounter. She was the one I had a crush on in work-study. We became good friends and she became my roommate, but we were only sexual that one time.
For the next two years I studied and did well in school, but was terrible with my finances, was very impulsive, and racked up quite a lot of credit debt. I bought my first car, a 1965 Volvo 122S for $650, took an auto class at the JC, and taught myself how to drive a stick shift. I went to US Karate Nationals in Miami as a brown belt and maintained a 3.75 GPA. I managed to have quite a few girl “friends”, but I could never seem to get past the friend stage and was pretty shy about making any moves even when the girl was sleeping in my bed!
I had a couple of other jobs, one working with developmentally disabled kids and the other was as a line cook in a vegetarian restaurant. The summer of 1992 began another shift in my life. I was about to teach Karate for the summer, but I tore my ACL.
So, instead I got a sales job. In Junior High I used to buy candy and sell it at school for a profit and whenever there was a sales contest in school or cub scouts I would do very well. I turned out to be very good at selling Cutco knives.
I was number five in the region in personal sales for the summer and number ten for the year. I began to develop social skills and became an assistant manager in the fall of 92. I loved learning about sales and started listening to Anthony Robbins and reading a lot of “success” books. I also had an affair with my manager, Anita and then another girl, Agnes both of which were short.
I began to go through the management-training program and in the summer of ’93 I became a branch manager for Vector Marketing. I had just turned 21 and I moved to San Francisco to open an office in the financial district. That was a challenging summer. It was very lonely and although I was a great recruiter my reps did not do very well. I lost a lot of money and would go out dancing and drinking at night. I found that I was naturally a good dancer. I also had sex with a couple of prostitutes that summer.
After closing my office early I went up to help my friend run his office and I helped him do very well. That fall I put off school after I decided that I really wanted to succeed with management and wanted to train with the best district manager in the company, Brad Britton.
I thrived in Brad’s office and he was promoted in the spring. I became Brad’s sales manager for the next year and we kicked ass. The following year I became a district manager in Fresno where we broke recruiting records and I bought myself a BMW 735i.
I was young and reckless though with my finances. I would go out a lot and developed bad habits of pornography, gambling, and drinking. Periodically, I would go though intense depressions and would stop showing up for work until things would get bad, I would be broke and then I would start to work again. When I worked we did incredible as a team.
For the next six years I would oscillate between periods of intense work and success (3-6 months) and periods of depression and sabotage (3-6 months). I would also avoid relationships and run away or sabotage those, the longest lasting four months. I listened to and read just about every self-help and success book I could find, and went to Life and Wealth Mastery with Tony Robbins. When I was on, I would do everything right, eat well, exercise, and work. Then suddenly I would do a 180. Fortunately we did so much business when I was on that I managed to keep my job, but after six years I hadn’t saved a dime and had the worst credit of all time.
In 2000 I began to re-contemplate the spiritual. During those six years I read a lot of Deepak Chopra, Course in Miracles, and pop spirituality. In 2000 I tried Ecstasy, LSD, and mushrooms for the first time and went to a lot of raves. I read Conversations with God, How to Know God and similar books. During my times of deep depression, what would often bring me out would be a recognition that if others felt anything like the pain I felt then I needed to be here and help in some way.
In April of 2001 after reading the Tao de Ching, Siddhartha, and the Kabbalah, I got in my car, left all of my possessions, left my phone, left no message for anyone and started driving. I was pretty depressed and thought I might drive off a cliff. The other thought I had was driving to Alaska and then catching a boat to Russia and hiking to China to get enlightened. I drove to Alaska.
I traveled all over Alaska for five months. I bought a tent and sleeping bag along the way and camped and hiked everywhere you could drive to. I started to read everything related to the spiritual quest, The History of God, a lot of Alan Watts, and lots more. I began to really want to know everything and began studying philosophy as well and intensely craving a “World Philosophy” that could make sense of all of these seeming contradictions. I haven’t mentioned this before but I have been journaling forever and so this process intensified.
Then I had an epiphany. I thought if I wanted to study and know everything then what better way then to study learning itself. I began to make a systematic study of learning and knowledge acquisition. Then I had another epiphany. What if I created a seminar on learning, that way I would really learn how to learn? I decided to learn and study everything as if someday I would teach and share it. This was my raison d’etre. This was my Daemon.
I moved to Hawaii after it started snowing in Alaska in the fall of 2001. It was in 2002 after breaking up from a very intense short relationship that I discovered Ken Wilber. I stayed in Border’s for months. I read everything he wrote and then just about every book he recommended.
I formalized an integral life practice at this time and began to visit every single spiritual master on the Island I could find from every tradition. I was on fire. I began psychotherapy, did my first 7-day sesshin, and actively sought out every authentic spiritual discipline I could find. I meditated every day, got intensely involved with the Jerrahi Order of Sufi’s and read countless books on everything, falling in love with Lex Hixon's writings.
Then I crashed into Vajrayana. It was rich, beautiful and intricate. And Padmasambahva was just the coolest person i'd ever heard of and I fell in love with the deep Tantric Archetype. I moved over to the Big Island to stay at a Buddhist temple and meet Sakya Trinzen. I went deeper and deeper, meeting and studying with one of Lex’s good friends Babaji Bob Kindler who was an Advaita master and moved close to Robert Aitkin, a Zen master, so I could I have dokusan everyday. In the course of two years I did 4-5 week long Zen sesshins, attended zikr weekly, met and had empowerments, teachings or retreats with 20 or more Vajrayana masters, did a 10 day vipassna retreat, a 5 day Advaita retreat, and 2 week long Dzogchen retreats with Lama Surya Das and Roger Walsh.
In addition, I did yoga, ITP, swimming, Tai Chi and read and listened to every integral thing I could get my hands on finding out that one of my former Vector managers from 1992, Barrett Brown was working with Integral Institute and began to really want to work with I-I. I did some volunteer work with I-I in the business & leadership domain helping Brett Thomas on some brief projects.
I began having kundalini experiences in 2003 that continue to intensify and I began having flashes of kensho culminating at the end of a Dzogchen retreat where during mantra practice, all pressures equalized and my self-sense expanded to fill everything. The experience lasted for a couple weeks where I knew I was in The Great Perfection.
Throughout this time I would occasionally slip into self-sabotage patterns. I feared I would always oscillate. I really wanted to have one spiritual master and friend that I could tell everything to but most of my teachers said I would have to just focus on one path and were at odds with Ken. I did want to follow Lama Surya Das, but he was too far away and never responded to the email I sent him.
It was in the fall of 2004 that I met Saniel Bonder. I saw an ad in What is Enlightenment? magazine and noticed Ken’s quote and ordered the free tape. I called the number and as it happened they were having a sitting the next day so I went. I bought all his books and few months later went to a Tantra of Trust retreat. Something went off. There was something very unique here and amazing.
When I got back to Hawaii, everything began to fall apart and all I can really say is that after and during a tumultuous 2005 I deeply arrived here……..
More to come
I am currently working on their marketing team. The following weekend I hope to attend the retreat with Andrew Cohen at Ions.
What's interesting is their respective juxtopositions within me. As I write this I am having extremly intense energies running throughout my brain, maybe haveing to do with the fact I just got off a conference call with Saniel, Linda and other destiny attenders of tomarrow. See Andrew's recent blog More on this later......
A Short History of V. John Baker
I was born on March 21st, 1972 at 7:03am in Redwood City, California during the end of the Uranus-Pluto conjunction. For the astrologically inclined that makes me an Aries with Aries rising. I am born on the cusp, three minutes into the very beginning of the Zodiac. I am also born in the year of the Rat, which is the sign that begins the Chinese Zodiac. I think that’s kind of cool to be born on the very edge of the beginning and end. My mom told me that I was a rambunctious little kid who crawled around in everything. When I was six months old, I crawled out of my crib and fell into my diaper bucket. I nearly suffocated in my own shit.
My parents were both brilliant socialites. According to my half-sister Lisa, ten years my senior, they were the life of every party and consumed copious amounts of substances. My parents were divorced when I was a year old. My sister tells me she took care of me most of the time and I was constantly getting into everything. My mom wanted to give me up for adoption, but my aunt and uncle on my dad’s side took me in and raised me until the age of three. I finally crawled out of my crib at age two.
My aunt and uncle are good people and I am blessed to have had that time with them and have a few memories of happy times. I broke my collar bone at age two & remember splitting my head on the fire place as well. The circular movement from dark to light and back became a major theme for my life. I was told that I was to be adopted by them, but, my dad got married to what would turn out to be the wicked step-mother and he decided to take me away from my Aunt & Uncle.
Kathy, the wicked step-mom, abused me both physically and psychologically while my dad was mostly not around. I remember spending most of my time alone outside with my toys and my beautiful self-created fantasy world.
I loved going to Grandma and Grandpa Baker’s house. My grandmother was a school-teacher from Nebraska who taught grades K-8 in a rural town and played piano in the silent movies. She taught me all kinds of things and I fell in love with learning at an early age. Her first child, a boy, died three days after he was born. I believe this had a profound affect on the way she raised my father. She had three other children, two girls and a boy, my father, the youngest. My Aunt Barbara died the year I was born. My cousin Johnny was her son and four years my senior. He used to teach me to draw and is now an amazing guitarist. My grandfather was a great salesman with a big heart and used to play cars and Star Wars with me all the time. I have fond memories of my grandparents.
Dad, Kathy and I moved to Missouri before my half-brother Jason was born in 1976. I remember a lot of dreams I had from ages four on. They were filled with vampires and ghosts. I remember seeing glowing green skeletons in my closet and had dreams of female vampires that I was afraid of but I also wanted desperately for them to bite me. I would always go explore everywhere on my own and loved to crawl down in sewers, on top of roofs, and out in the wide wilderness. We moved back to California in 1977. I got stuck inside of a chimney I tried to go down at age five. The fire department had to cut a hole in the damper and I made the front page of the Napa Register.
Kathy loved Jason and hated me it seemed. The abuse from Kathy continued and I remember hitting my brother once when I was five and he was one. I felt so horrible when he cried that I never hit him again. I absolutely loved Kindergarten and couldn’t wait to go everyday. We moved a lot and I went to three different Kindergartens and two different first grades. I contemplated suicide and told my Dad I was going to run into the street to get run over. I started going to therapy at age five.
In 1978 Kathy and Dad split up, Kathy taking Jason back to Missouri. I lived with my Dad, but he was mostly not around so I would take care of myself most all the time, going to Catholic School in the first grade.
He got together with another lady, Reba. They had Reba’s daughter who was eleven watch me but she would try to get me in trouble by planting pictures that said “I hate Reba” in my room and then I would get spanked for lying that I didn’t do it. After a number of these incidents I burned her Barbie dolls and started stealing since I was a bad kid anyway.
They split because of me my Dad said and then I moved in with my grandparents while my Dad partied and worked and I saw him at times. My grandparents went to church and so did I. That’s when I fell in love with Jesus. I wanted to be Jesus. I felt so guilty though. I was stealing from stores around that time and getting into mischief. I remember Grandma telling me that Jesus would only forgive me so many times and I tried hard to be good but then I would mess up again. I prayed every night for forgiveness and was afraid I would go to Hell. I remember blessing everybody every night even Kathy who I wanted to love me.
I was given a kitten named Sandy that I loved. One day I swung Sandy around by her tail and beat her on the ground. Nobody ever found out but she was hurt really bad and I cried and cried. Since that day I only hurt one more creature, besides the occasional bug (I shot a bird with a BB gun when I was thirteen and held it in my hands as it died and I cried for hours). Today, I can’t even swat a mosquito.
Around this time I have the first memory of my real mom, Bonnie. I would go to visit her for a few weeks in Santa Rosa throughout the year. She lived on a big ranch and had several houses. I met my half sister Lisa, who was 19, and my cousins Mark and Kim who were my age and I loved to play with them. Mark and I are still close.
In 1980 my Dad bought a house in Napa and I went to live with him. He worked a lot and I was alone most of the time with a key to the house. I had some new friends that would play games and stuff. I had a baby sitter sometimes when my Dad was gone overnight. That same year Kathy and Jason moved back from Missouri and they were remarried.
I did pretty well in school, especially in math, due to my grandmother doing flash cards with me all the time. I fell in love with reading and writing in the 2nd grade. I started reading incessantly around this time. Dracula, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Littles, The Hobbit, Choose your Own Adventure, and then all kinds of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I also started playing Dungeons and Dragons and reading comic books. I would spend all of my free time in the library and book stores. I stole a lot of books and toys at the time as well. I also got an Atari 2600 and played a lot of video games. I especially remember the writings of Roger Zelazny. I also wrote a lot of fantasy stories.
I remember when the library got a computer and my friend had an Apple 2C. I started going to Christian school in the 4th grade and played computer games at the library. Socially I was cool with the boys and was average in sports but, I was really intimidated by the girls. I always had crushes on these girls but I was so shy and really needy when I would be around them.
I did well in school but got into trouble after school. I would steal money from my parents and stole a lot of things from stores. My brother and I got along well and I loved him very much but, I was really jealous of all of the attention Kathy gave him. I would of course receive the occasional beating. After I got my brother in trouble for stealing toys with me, the beatings got a lot worse.
In sixth grade I went to Catholic school since Kathy was Catholic and Jason went there as well. I really loved going to Mass and also the Baptist church with my Grandparents. It was at this time that I asked Jesus into my heart as my personal Savior. I tried really hard to be good and do the right things. I was so incredibly lonely and would pray a lot. It was this year that my Aunt & Uncle got me an IBM PCjr and I started to learn Basic and go onto BBS’s with my 300 baud modem.
One day, after a particularly intense beating I ran away to my mom’s house. It was during this time that my Dad and Kathy finalized a second divorce. While staying with my Mom I was enrolled in another Christian school. My mom was rarely around but when she was she was mean and demanding. She was a heavy drinker and it was during this time that I experimented with alcohol and cigarettes. It wasn’t long, six months, before my Mom said she couldn’t take care of me any more.
I went to live with my grandparents at this time. I switched schools again, but after a few months my Dad took me out of the Christian school when I got in trouble. Amazing enough through all of this I still did well in school and really loved to learn. In public school I did well and spent a lot of time on the computer. I had a few friends who were trouble makers and we used to skate board, steal stuff, and smoke marijuana.
I moved around so much that I never had much chance to get to know girls. It was during this time that my sex drive became very powerful. My dad used to hide magazines under his bed that I would look at and my Mom also had a collection as well. Neither of my parents said anything about sex so I learned from the magazines and in school a little.
My Grandfather died of colon cancer after about 6 months in and out of the hospital. That was 1985 and I moved once again to stay with my Mom when Grandpa fell ill. Again, my Mom was rarely around and when she would come back from her trips she was always upset about something I did or didn’t do. After a few months my Mom had had enough of me and so I went to live with my Dad and Grandma.
This was also my first year in High School. I did pretty well in school and then after school would go play computers, read or steal. That summer I got to go to a Seventh Day Adventist camp with my cousins. After camp I vowed that I would be good and try really hard. I prayed that God would take care of me.
That prayer would be answered in a way that I could not have predicted. My Dad had a party one night and I was really sad and lonely. I snuck into the kitchen and stole some of the pina coladas they were making. Then I went to wander around in the woods behind the house at night. I came to a neighbor’s house and decided it might be exciting to break into their house. I had a flashlight and I tried to open a window. Someone saw me and called the police. As it turned out going to Juvenile Hall was the best thing that could have happened to me.
My Dad came to get me but I refused to go home. They had me take some psychological tests and I made up answers. After 45 days in Juvie, I became a ward of the court and they sent me to a “residential treatment center”. It was 1987 and I was 15. This event would dramatically alter my life.
The place was called Family Life Center and it was in Petaluma, California. For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by people who actually seemed to care for my welfare. There was structure and the rules were very strict. I remember thinking it would be really easy. In some ways it was, but in other ways it was the hardest thing I have ever done.
There were a total of 21 boys there, twelve of which lived on campus and another 9 that lived in satellite homes and came to school from 9-4pm M-F. Everyday we had what they called “circle” where we would all sit together and we would work on issues. Sharing, anger work, confronting underground issues, cradling, & bringing yourself up for a phase change were some of the things we did during circle.
Daily we had our rooms to keep clean and indoor and outdoor cleaning periods. I had to rake the gravel driveway everyday for about 10 months. That’s also how long it took me to go from phase two to three. Each phase carried it’s privileges and it’s responsibilities. We had to do so many guided visualizations and a certain number of additional work hours during your free time in addition to working on your issues and behaving in order to move up phases.
We had no contact with parents except once a month and we got to go home for Thanksgiving and Christmas but we couldn’t stay overnight. We were expected to introspect and examine ourselves. Each phase had three key concepts that we were to meditate upon. Each phase also had certain requirements such as certain numbers of guided meditations, work projects, circular breathings, art therapy, and wilderness trips. We also had regular school each day from 10-3pm.
When you first enter the program we wrap a string around an arrow and we are supposed to meditate upon the words communication, listening, and resolution. We also are to take responsibility for why we are there and make the major commitments of no drugs or alcohol, no sex, no violence, threats of violence, or destruction of property, and no running away.
Phase three was about self-image, personal history, and exploration. It took me ten months to get it and I lost it a few months later for watching a rated R movie, looking at pornography and keeping it secret for a few weeks. I was assigned a lot of work hours and then I ran away for an evening.
When I came back I was in huge trouble and it took four months of disciplined work and effort before becoming phase three again. This is when I got to move off campus into a satellite home with five other boys.
Our parents were really amazing people that to this day I credit for opening both my mind and heart. They were both working on MFCC’s; Scott was 30 and Rachel, 26. They were both vegetarian and followed the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda. I read Autobiography of a Yogi, a bunch of Richard Bach, & The Way of the Peaceful Warrior around this time.
One of the other staff members was a Buddhist and I fell in love with Cat Stevens who I found out had converted to Islam. I developed a profound appreciation for the spiritual quest and felt drawn to Scott’s stories of satoris and began to contemplate enlightenment at age sixteen. I took up meditation and subscribed to the Self-Realization lessons while attending events and meditations with Scott and Rachel. I also became a vegetarian.
I still had plenty of issues to work on, and with phase three I began to have monthly therapy with my parents and got to go home for a day per month. As far as school went I got straight A’s and I was proud of the fact I taught myself Algebra 1 and 2 since our teacher didn't know math very well.
Phase Four was about responsibility, integrity, and connectedness. I began to take on a leadership/mentor role for the newer students. Art therapy exploration was amazing, and we got to go on hiking trips off trail with outward-bound staff members.
The program used a lot of Native American symbolism and on our wilderness trips I did a vision quest, and a twenty-four hour solo. Back on campus we had a medicine wheel, got to visit on reservations, and had a shaman come. I was chosen to have him give me a healing. I also explored and discovered my personal totems and made lasting connections with Horse and Tiger.
In Phase Five, we began to transition towards leaving FLC. We went through a work-training program and I got a job a Mervyn’s Department Store. During this time I developed a crush on a girl that I was in work-study with. She was a student at the other coed FLC campus. The key words for Phase Five were Interdependence, Humility, and Appreciation.
I graduated in January 1990 from both the program and high school. I was the twenty-first person to ever graduate the program since 1977. Many years later, I found out that the school was developed by Tibetan Buddhist students. FLC helped me transition into work and attending Santa Rosa Junior College. I was 17 when I started college. I had decided to become a Physics major. I was fascinated by science and wanted to figure out how and why everything was. I figured Physics could answer most anything and I was determined to figure out a Grand Unified Field Theory.
I began Shotokan Karate, took piano, and got straight A’s in college. I was also very lonely at times and would go through periods of intense depression. I had my first sexual experience at age 18. She was a co-worker, had a boyfriend and a child, and generally speaking, was not a good situation. When I told her I was done with the relationship, she informed me she was pregnant. It turned out to be a lie, but that scarred me tremendously.
It was with Kashya that I had my second sexual encounter. She was the one I had a crush on in work-study. We became good friends and she became my roommate, but we were only sexual that one time.
For the next two years I studied and did well in school, but was terrible with my finances, was very impulsive, and racked up quite a lot of credit debt. I bought my first car, a 1965 Volvo 122S for $650, took an auto class at the JC, and taught myself how to drive a stick shift. I went to US Karate Nationals in Miami as a brown belt and maintained a 3.75 GPA. I managed to have quite a few girl “friends”, but I could never seem to get past the friend stage and was pretty shy about making any moves even when the girl was sleeping in my bed!
I had a couple of other jobs, one working with developmentally disabled kids and the other was as a line cook in a vegetarian restaurant. The summer of 1992 began another shift in my life. I was about to teach Karate for the summer, but I tore my ACL.
So, instead I got a sales job. In Junior High I used to buy candy and sell it at school for a profit and whenever there was a sales contest in school or cub scouts I would do very well. I turned out to be very good at selling Cutco knives.
I was number five in the region in personal sales for the summer and number ten for the year. I began to develop social skills and became an assistant manager in the fall of 92. I loved learning about sales and started listening to Anthony Robbins and reading a lot of “success” books. I also had an affair with my manager, Anita and then another girl, Agnes both of which were short.
I began to go through the management-training program and in the summer of ’93 I became a branch manager for Vector Marketing. I had just turned 21 and I moved to San Francisco to open an office in the financial district. That was a challenging summer. It was very lonely and although I was a great recruiter my reps did not do very well. I lost a lot of money and would go out dancing and drinking at night. I found that I was naturally a good dancer. I also had sex with a couple of prostitutes that summer.
After closing my office early I went up to help my friend run his office and I helped him do very well. That fall I put off school after I decided that I really wanted to succeed with management and wanted to train with the best district manager in the company, Brad Britton.
I thrived in Brad’s office and he was promoted in the spring. I became Brad’s sales manager for the next year and we kicked ass. The following year I became a district manager in Fresno where we broke recruiting records and I bought myself a BMW 735i.
I was young and reckless though with my finances. I would go out a lot and developed bad habits of pornography, gambling, and drinking. Periodically, I would go though intense depressions and would stop showing up for work until things would get bad, I would be broke and then I would start to work again. When I worked we did incredible as a team.
For the next six years I would oscillate between periods of intense work and success (3-6 months) and periods of depression and sabotage (3-6 months). I would also avoid relationships and run away or sabotage those, the longest lasting four months. I listened to and read just about every self-help and success book I could find, and went to Life and Wealth Mastery with Tony Robbins. When I was on, I would do everything right, eat well, exercise, and work. Then suddenly I would do a 180. Fortunately we did so much business when I was on that I managed to keep my job, but after six years I hadn’t saved a dime and had the worst credit of all time.
In 2000 I began to re-contemplate the spiritual. During those six years I read a lot of Deepak Chopra, Course in Miracles, and pop spirituality. In 2000 I tried Ecstasy, LSD, and mushrooms for the first time and went to a lot of raves. I read Conversations with God, How to Know God and similar books. During my times of deep depression, what would often bring me out would be a recognition that if others felt anything like the pain I felt then I needed to be here and help in some way.
In April of 2001 after reading the Tao de Ching, Siddhartha, and the Kabbalah, I got in my car, left all of my possessions, left my phone, left no message for anyone and started driving. I was pretty depressed and thought I might drive off a cliff. The other thought I had was driving to Alaska and then catching a boat to Russia and hiking to China to get enlightened. I drove to Alaska.
I traveled all over Alaska for five months. I bought a tent and sleeping bag along the way and camped and hiked everywhere you could drive to. I started to read everything related to the spiritual quest, The History of God, a lot of Alan Watts, and lots more. I began to really want to know everything and began studying philosophy as well and intensely craving a “World Philosophy” that could make sense of all of these seeming contradictions. I haven’t mentioned this before but I have been journaling forever and so this process intensified.
Then I had an epiphany. I thought if I wanted to study and know everything then what better way then to study learning itself. I began to make a systematic study of learning and knowledge acquisition. Then I had another epiphany. What if I created a seminar on learning, that way I would really learn how to learn? I decided to learn and study everything as if someday I would teach and share it. This was my raison d’etre. This was my Daemon.
I moved to Hawaii after it started snowing in Alaska in the fall of 2001. It was in 2002 after breaking up from a very intense short relationship that I discovered Ken Wilber. I stayed in Border’s for months. I read everything he wrote and then just about every book he recommended.
I formalized an integral life practice at this time and began to visit every single spiritual master on the Island I could find from every tradition. I was on fire. I began psychotherapy, did my first 7-day sesshin, and actively sought out every authentic spiritual discipline I could find. I meditated every day, got intensely involved with the Jerrahi Order of Sufi’s and read countless books on everything, falling in love with Lex Hixon's writings.
Then I crashed into Vajrayana. It was rich, beautiful and intricate. And Padmasambahva was just the coolest person i'd ever heard of and I fell in love with the deep Tantric Archetype. I moved over to the Big Island to stay at a Buddhist temple and meet Sakya Trinzen. I went deeper and deeper, meeting and studying with one of Lex’s good friends Babaji Bob Kindler who was an Advaita master and moved close to Robert Aitkin, a Zen master, so I could I have dokusan everyday. In the course of two years I did 4-5 week long Zen sesshins, attended zikr weekly, met and had empowerments, teachings or retreats with 20 or more Vajrayana masters, did a 10 day vipassna retreat, a 5 day Advaita retreat, and 2 week long Dzogchen retreats with Lama Surya Das and Roger Walsh.
In addition, I did yoga, ITP, swimming, Tai Chi and read and listened to every integral thing I could get my hands on finding out that one of my former Vector managers from 1992, Barrett Brown was working with Integral Institute and began to really want to work with I-I. I did some volunteer work with I-I in the business & leadership domain helping Brett Thomas on some brief projects.
I began having kundalini experiences in 2003 that continue to intensify and I began having flashes of kensho culminating at the end of a Dzogchen retreat where during mantra practice, all pressures equalized and my self-sense expanded to fill everything. The experience lasted for a couple weeks where I knew I was in The Great Perfection.
Throughout this time I would occasionally slip into self-sabotage patterns. I feared I would always oscillate. I really wanted to have one spiritual master and friend that I could tell everything to but most of my teachers said I would have to just focus on one path and were at odds with Ken. I did want to follow Lama Surya Das, but he was too far away and never responded to the email I sent him.
It was in the fall of 2004 that I met Saniel Bonder. I saw an ad in What is Enlightenment? magazine and noticed Ken’s quote and ordered the free tape. I called the number and as it happened they were having a sitting the next day so I went. I bought all his books and few months later went to a Tantra of Trust retreat. Something went off. There was something very unique here and amazing.
When I got back to Hawaii, everything began to fall apart and all I can really say is that after and during a tumultuous 2005 I deeply arrived here……..
More to come
posted by vjohnbaker at 7:47 PM
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