Into The Light

[Questioner]

Greg, I found your story to be very interesting to me. I also appreciate the clarity and conciseness of your writing style.

I was born with a birth defect (inverted breastbone) and my father called me “the freak” because of it.

If anything, the cruel father may have been the freak, because of supplying defective DNA. I imagine that was not an interpretation he would have enjoyed.

I've had close friends who were devout JW's and got to learn a lot about the religion. I admire their sincerity and devotion, their nonprofit organization and their social service work, although I find their teachings and music to be mostly nonsensical, tedious, and not helpful in my own spiritual journey. This was a few years ago, and no mention was made of the missed deadlines in JW prophecy.

I also grew up in a cult environment with strange teachings (not JW though). I've also had to deal with challenges about figuring out what is true, and how to deal with spiritual authority or teachings.

My engineering career had blossomed into a management career. By age 30, I was on the management fast-track in a Fortune 500 company.

I also have a lot of experience in major corporations. There were many good people working in those companies, and many interesting experiences along the way. Unfortunately, most of that experience was before I had any kind of awareness of what was abusive conditioning from my earlier experiences. These conditioned responses made me helpless to deal with what I now see as STS empire-builders offering me the catalyst of an alternative to my own innate compassionate nature.

I think it is interesting that the whole quality movement - including Deming, Lean, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints - can be either STS or STO. I think that despite his later lapses to paranoia, Henry Ford was primarily an STO based visionary who genuinely wanted to use business systems to help people. I also think the creation of the Toyota Production System was an amazing gift of love for a society overwhelmed by the ravages of war.

The McDonald's story has inspired countless franchise successes, even though Roy Kroc was apparently something of an SOB personally.

In short, most of these systems are heavy-duty power tools, that can be wielded for either help or harm.

If you are continuing in the business world, may I recommend you check out the work of Jay Abraham. His underlying philosophy of compassionate service seems to me to be a deeply STO-grounded basis for marketing.

What a shocking string of situations with your prospective investors. Do you think there could have been some kind of negative spiritual force using whatever it could to destroy your chances of having an ethical company?

I experienced an outpouring of spirit as I began writing songs about oneness. It was as if the songs were already there and I was simply lucky enough to discover them!

I've often felt that in music, as have many musicians.

I began having second thoughts about New Thought because of the insistence that disease is the result of wrong thinking and what I perceived as a distortion of the Law of Attraction.

I'd love to see this be a new topic here, there is a lot to discuss about this.

I agree that ACIM is presented in an abstract, intellectual way that pretty much only makes sense if you already know what it says.

I have only recently come across the Ra material. I believe it provides the clearest picture of how things work.

Since you have the scientific mind, I wonder if you have explored David Wilcock's site.

Thanks again for sharing your ideas and experiences.