​Chapter 1
 
Entering the fire
 
If your knowledge of fire has been turned
To certainty by words alone
Then seek to be cooked by the fire itself.
Don’t abide in borrowed certainty,
There is no real certainty until you burn;
If you wish for this, sit down in the fire.
Rumi
 
Naked in the hot sun I turned the dead jellyfish over several times on the beach with a stick to find its center.
There was none. With a shock I realized that I also had no center and that I was just a mishmash of unfocused and accidental happenings.
And just like that, all of a sudden, completely out of the blue, I knew with great certainty that I needed to find my center!
 
Amazing how Grace finds us and puts us on the path toward self-realization. I could have never come up with that by myself.
I write this now that I am 64 years old and I have lived a rich and abundant life because of that initial spark.
At that time I did not realize what an initiating moment this was. Neither did I know that it would guide me to several enlightened masters and gurus and open doors in my consciousness that had been closed and were forgotten during many lifetimes.
Had I known what hardship the journey would bring in its wake I might have quickly thrown the jellyfish away and pretend to never have seen it.  At the same time, if I had imagined the glory that would be revealed to me, I would have clung to it for dear life.
Luckily Grace itself did the job and put a flame in my heart that took care of everything.