Consciousness — The Final Frontier
My 4-decade journey into Wellness & Spirituality
Welcome to the new, Golden Era!
Technically, according to replicable, observable astronomical patterns, the actual new Golden Age begins December 12, 2020 when Saturn and Jupiter reach a certain alignment in the sky. The last time they met in this location was at the end of the farming agricultural era and the beginning of the industrial revolution. Now as that obsolete industrial era is coming to an end we can already see the beginning signs the new age — let’s materialistic and more virtual. But I’m getting way ahead of myself.
I’ve been asked to write this article about my spiritual wellness/consciousness journey. As I have been on this planet for over 60 years I’ll have to create several articles to tell the story. I hope my story and experiences will offer some perspective and inspiration that may help others find more wisdom, wellness, & joy in life.
Story 1: A Psychic Medium is Born — Gift or Curse
The darkness in my parents bedroom was unusually eerie. There was a long row of married couples standing, facing me. The couple at the front of the line closest to me was holding up masks over their faces. The masks looked like my parents faces.
The couple said, “We are your parents.”
Then the couple handed the masks to the couple standing behind them and the new couple stood in front of me. They repeated the same sentence, “We are your parents.” This continued until I woke up from this dream — this nightmare.
This dream first came to me when I was around 8 years old, Over the next 8 or so years this dream kept recurring. As you can imagine, these dreams were quite disturbing. What did it mean? Why was it happening? I had no clue but it was clearly influencing how I saw my life and my future as I would have this unpleasant dream over the next years of my life.
Over these years I also had other psychic or intuitive experiences — knowing it was going to snow in early September when it never snowed until December; seeing the answer to a game we were playing in my mind’s eye; knowing we were going to have guests surprise us and visit. While such experiences may sound ‘cool’, the reaction I got from my mother was one of freaking out or anger over this so-called ‘gift’. So the idea of spirituality, psychic mediumship (I had no names for any of this back then) as a helpful tool was the farthest thing from my experience. If I was seen as weird, or if I saw events I had no control over — this ‘gift’ was unwanted. So I did my best to ignore it.
Once while walking to junior high school I looked up in the tree tops and saw the silhouette of a UFO. I just shrugged it off and kept walking. Why wasn’t I interested in visiting the ship (or did I?).
The point of these formative years of my life is that there was virtually no talk of psychic mediumship experiences in our family or our circle of friends. My grandmother did have this healing gift where she could suck out your illness and spit it out. But this was so natural it never seemed unusual or special; just a grandmother loving her grandchild. This was the early 1960’s and unlike today, there was no experience of meditation, intuitive gifts, or alternative healing. The closest thing we had at that time was Jack LaLane on TV doing jumping jacks and telling us to eat pumpernickel bread.
Those of us born in the 1950’s were spiritual pioneers, now called the original ‘Light Workers.’ This is a feel-good term now, but back then there were no words in the lexicon, and no Facebook to share our experiences.
Goooood Morning Vietnam!
Fast forward — I was now around 16 years old — the Vietnam war going on on the home front my old dream/nightmare went away… only to be replaced by an even more disturbing dream. In this dream I was coming home from being a soldier in Vietnam (only in my dream — not in real life) and my parents had moved and did not tell me where they moved.
Then over the next few years this dream also was replaced by yet more disturbing recurring dream. I was learning to drive and my nightmare was I was in the car and the brakes didn’t work. One day the dreams spilled over into my waking life and I had a vision of my parents dying. Within the next two years these dream prophecies all came true when my parents met with an untimely death through a car accident.
So while some people may think it is something special gift to be born a psychic medium, I can assure you to me it was a curse that shaped my belief system, life was dark and fated; I had no choice.
Every Cloud as a Silver Lining
There was one bright spot in all this tragedy. Being on my own at 18, I was free to explore my latent spiritual calling. I was very curious about why and who was preparing me my entire life for my parents early death. How can someone be so psychic? Is there more to life than what we are taught? In an act of synchronicity, in 1972, meditation and spirituality was just dawning in the USA and so there was a trickle of learning opportunities beginning to seep into the culture for me to take advantage of.
A friend introduced to the Don Juan/Carlos Casteneda’s first three books, and Ram Dass’ Be Here Now. Star Trek episodes also seemed to have mystical insights. At college there was a free lecture on meditation from India and it spoke to me like nothing else. My latent calling to understand self-realization, ESP, and any and anything metaphysical was beginning to be answered.
Over the next 5–7 years I changed the course of my life. I switched majors and devoted myself to learning and then teaching meditation & yoga. This was the first thing that really gave my life meaning and purpose — the first thing that touched my life. Spirituality had helped me begin to connect with my inner consciousness or spirit and if it could help me so much, I wanted to share it with others too.
If I Can Make It Here — I Can Make It Anywhere
Fast Forward — New York City, late 90’s. This was a time when I was trying to integrate spirituality with practical reality. I got a job in NY city in the TV broadcast industry. The money was great but the ‘mundane’ world felt was really empty to me. Once again I began seeking out spiritual topics to fill my inner calling.
While reading books about natural & spiritual healing I discovered Ayurveda, India’s ‘life-science’. While this was such a different concept than western medicine, reading this book felt like I was just being reminded of something I already knew. Like a sponge, I read every book on the subject that was written in the USA — I read both books.
Strangely enough, while Ayurveda was virtually unknown in the country, there was a store in NY City called, Ayurveda. And incredibly, there was an actual Ayurvedic practitioner working there. One day I visited him for an herbal remedy for the flu. When I returned home I drank the potion and… instantly my body regained balance! No more flu! Miracle!
I never experienced anything like this! I realized the flu was not some bug in me but an imbalance — a life altering view of health & wellness. With this new view of life I was compelled to learn everything I could about Ayurveda, and after calling the publisher of the Ayurveda books I eventually found my way to study and become a certified Ayurveda practitioner myself.
For the second time I decided to change my life course. This time I would leave the media industry and re-devote my life to helping others with Ayurveda (and Vedic Astrology) along with meditation and yoga. But before I did, I felt called to visit mother India to thank her for all these spiritual and healing gifts that changed my life in ways I could have never imagined.
Now I felt more connected and my life had more purpose than ever before.I sold my home, let go of all my belongings and went to India with just a fanny pack (full of herbs). My goal — visit the Himalayas, thank mother India, and meet a guru. I was free to pursue my innermost calling — Self-Realization or Enlightenment — for me spirituality was the final frontier.
Coming Next: Part 2: India
For the past 4 decades Swamiji (the Orange Cowboy) has been helping others with meditation, yoga, ayurveda, shamanic/energy/trance healing, & psychic mediumship.
He offers group mediumship events, beginners meditation courses for colleges, businesses, and churches around the globe.
He spoke to the White House alternative medicine commission, wrote a #1 best seller, the Ayurveda Encyclopedia, and has presented at John Hopkins U and other medical universities internationally.
Learn more about Swamiji at OrangeCowboy.com
