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Ch 1 - The Dinner Ch 2 - Mickey Ch 3 - Elizabeth Ch 4 - The Poster Ch 5 - Self-Discovery Outing Ch 6 - Shawn’s Boyfriend Ch 7 - Taking The Step Ch 8 - My First Student Meeting Ch 9 - Don’t Trash Ch 10 Meditation & the Wreck Ch 11 In The Desert Ch 12 After The Desert Ch 13 The Ebell Theater Ch 14 So, You Want To Be A Teacher? Ch 15 The Visit Ch 16 The Golden Oldies Ch 17 The Correction Ch 18 The Gift Ch 19 Disneyland Ch 20 The Letter Ch 21 Starting Out Ch 22 First Night As A Teacher Ch 23 The Thank You Card Ch 24 Priorities Ch 25 Corrected Again Ch 26 Returning Home Ch 27 The Call Ch 28 On The Road To New York Ch 29 Christmas At Golden’s Bridge Ch 30 Jumpy Ch 31 The Initiation Ch 32 Time To Leave Ch 33 Keeping It Clean Ch 34 Looking Back Epilogue   Visit Shiva's web site   About Rama

Chapter 4 - The Poster

The Sunday congregation had just finished singing "Oh What A Beautiful Morning!" and it was time for the announcements.  I stood up behind the podium.

"I have decided that the first spiritual excursion in our Self-Discovery Outings will be..."

It was 1982 and I was now thirty-six years old.  Everything in my life had just fallen apart.  I had recently lost my position as the minister of the Beverly Hills Science of Mind Center (a New Age metaphysical church), and was in the midst of a divorce. 

It was a tough time of transition and I was attempting to regain some of my purpose and self-esteem by creating another New Thought Church in Marina Del Rey, California. 

This new church, "The L.I.F.E. Center," had around twenty people as a core group. 

Shawn had came up with the idea of naming it the L.I.F.E. Center.  It was an acronym for  "Living In Full Expression."  Shawn was one of my assistant ministers.  She was a beautiful, vivacious redhead and her enthusiasm was impossible to constrain.  The name and concept was so wonderful that it was immediately adopted.

Some of the younger crowd from Beverly Hills had followed me to this new church and there seemed to be a lot of excitement and energy in this new endeavor.  We worked as a group of friends trying to create a caring spiritual community.

As part of our commitment to L.I.F.E., we decided to have a monthly Self-Discovery Outing as a group social activity.  All of us began looking for some interesting activities for these outings and we kicked around a number of great options.

On this particular Sunday morning, I had bought an L.A. Times.  I didn't usually read a paper before church.  But today was different.  I opened the paper to see a full page color advertisement of this strange meditation teacher called Atmananda. 

My mind went back to Mickey and Elizabeth.  For the first time I made the connection.

The sheer energy of the poster captivated me.  It was really quite extraordinary and its power fascinated me.  In addition to his picture, Atmananda listed his past lives as a teacher complete with locations and dates.  I felt intuitively that this strange spiritual resume was, in fact, true!  I was hooked.

I showed the poster to Shawn and she became immediately excited.  So, right then and there, it was decided to make this our first outing.

Now, here I stood in front of my small congregation.  As I held up this poster for everyone to see, there was a gasp let out by the congregation.  Everyone shifted in their seats.  Some seemed truly excited while others were clearly uncomfortable.  Their reaction to the energy of the poster both surprised and impressed me as I announced that our Self-Discovery Outing would be attending a public meditation with this teacher called Atmananda. 

I had a gut feeling that this would be a most interesting outing.

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