I fell in love in my senior year and dated briefly. It did not last long and I thought I understood why. She was such an angel and I was such a fraud. My self esteem was almost non-existent and I knew I did not deserve someone like her. It was hard but I accepted it and thought that someday I might grow enough to become worthy of someone like her.
At the age of eighteen I joined the Rosicrucian Order AMORC in what was to become one of the most fateful and important decisions of my life. I began receiving weekly monographs of study material and my world exploded as I was exposed to new and frightening ideas for the first time.
Many of these were frightening and at odds with my own religious background. Some of these concepts included the idea that the bible was a symbolic work meant to be taken symbolically and not literally. Another was that the Christ Spirit resided within everyone and spoke through the still small voice of my conscience. They called it “The Master Within”.
I was to defer all things not to external authority but to the “Master Within” that resided in my own heart and would guide me if I would listen.
If that was not enough they also introduced me to the concept of reincarnation and of how we have lived many lifetimes before this one.
I pondered these things in my heart and they sounded true. Gradually as the monographs progressed the cognitive dissonance increased. I was torn between the religion I had been taught and this new spiritual and mystical path that drew me so powerfully.
Mentally things were happening as well and I remember the time when my entire thinking ability and thought processes outgrew my old abilities. It was as if everything in my mind was shrunk onto microfiche. I began thinking in images instead of words and became capable of much more complex concepts. My awareness moved out of the old crowded building that had become too small and moved into one that was frighteningly large and empty. Mentally I was operating in new space.
