01-24-2009, 12:27 PM
Carla’s Wanderer Story
I have known for a very long time that I was different from other people my age. Upon reaching adulthood, so-called, I found that I remained different, not just different from people my age but just in general. It is not that difference that comes out in adolescence when we are differentiating ourselves from our elders and mentors. I have never been a rebel. On the other hand, conforming for the sake of fitting in is not only not my choice but also impossible for me. I just don’t fit in the box and I never have!
What makes a wanderer know he is one? There are signs:
• Being sensitive to Planet Earth and having lots of allergies and health problems.
• Feeling that he is on a mission from God, as the Blues Brothers put it so aptly.
• Feeling isolated from others of his kind and yearning for someone with whom to share and converse.
• Feeling more kinship with the stars than with the society in which he lives.
• Thinking in terms of ethics and morality rather than what the surrounding culture feels is right.
• Finding no real home in anything except spiritual seeking and spiritually oriented company and conversation.
In my life, these have all cropped up. First, let's take being sensitive to Planet Earth. My whole life has been a story of illness and conditions that reflect my sensitivity to the vibrations of Earth. Born with birth defects in my left eye, which was pressing into the amygdale at birth, I was expected to die of trauma to the brain. I did not.
Then at age 2, I had a very tough bout of rheumatic fever, and every organ in my body was affected. I was expected to die. I did not.
At age 13, and again at age 15, my kidneys failed. I was expected to die. Again, I disappointed the doctors, who reluctantly retired from predictions, scratching their heads.
At age 65, I have collected a stack of chronic ailments – three rheumatoid diagnoses (arthritis, lupus and fibromyalgia), interstitial cystitis, GI tract diagnoses galore and allergies to everything under the sun, literally. My days are not spent in physical comfort. It’s just a matter of which ailment is most pressing. My wrists have been rebuilt four times each and I’ve had about two dozen other operations to keep my hands and feet, fingers and toes working. If it sounds drab, it is, but I look at the body drama as dues for being here on Earth and I am glad to pay them.
Then there is the “mission from God” thing. That mission came to me very early in life. Jesus was and is very real to me, but in early childhood I was with Him whenever I went to my “magic kingdom” which I could reach by focusing on the sunlight as it was refracted through the lenses of my glasses, which I placed on a slat of the Venetian blinds in my bedroom as a toddler. When I was supposed to be napping I would instead slide out on that focused beam of light from my glasses and go to a wonderful place where I could talk to the trees and animals. Jesus was there. He would sit beside me, hold my hand and look into my eyes. And I would know what it is to love. Those eyes of love have guided me ever since.
At that young age, I decided that I wished to spend my life in service to Jesus. This was all quite apart from any formal religious training. My walk with Jesus has always been mystical and non-dogmatic. I follow those eyes of love and do not worry about tenets of faith.
I had a wonderful childhood in some ways and a tough one in others. The good parts: I was able to spend two months every summer from age 5 to 17, dancing at Noyes Camp in Portland, Connecticut. Noyes Rhythm is a type of modern dance discipline which posits that we are all one, that all is alive and has a rhythm of its own, and that we can dance the horse, the star or the bear. I adored dancing, and also had six years of ballet before rebelling against the torture of toe shoes.
Another good part of my childhood was my friendship with horses, on and off in my youth. When I was seven through nine I lived on a farm which boarded retired horses and ponies and I spent many hours on their backs, riding bareback in the pasture. And at Noyes Camp, the staff acquired a horse named Thistle. Thistle was a renegade and would not allow anyone on her back except me. So I had my own horse, and rode constantly, whenever I could, from age 13 to 17. Horses are the best friends! Intelligent, funny, full of personality and loyal and affectionate beyond any telling, the horses I have known have been wonderful companions of my solitude.
Books constitute another great part of my childhood and my life in general. I read voraciously in childhood and have continued ever since, finding wonderful company in ideas, stories and myths.
Singing is the other excellent part of that period of my life, for I was always encouraged to sing, and performed as a member of church choirs and other choruses from age four, the first year I was big enough to hold songbooks. I have always loved performing.
The challenging part of my childhood was my first round of experiencing what I have come to feel is my incarnational lesson: loving without expectation of return. Both my parents were performers. They both had day jobs and were respected professionals, my dad being an engineer and my mom a licensed clinical psychologist and professor. But their hearts were in performing. They lived for their gigs! And the performance lifestyle is heavily alcohol and drug-related. They passed on the heavy drugs like cocaine and heroin, but they drank an ocean of alcohol. Engrossed in their own issues and pretty much self-involved, they left their kids alone and in my care. I was the eldest of three children, and from the age of seven, I was the designated babysitter.
Since I felt that my mission was to serve Jesus, this was OK with me, although I always resented that I never got paid for my constant baby-sitting. It was simply expected of me. I knew I was being taken advantage of, but could do nothing about that. So I gave up on achieving fairness and served faithfully.
My great disappointment there was that my folks, both being brilliant and perfectionistic, constantly related to me by explaining what I had not done correctly rather than by thanking me for keeping my brothers happy, safe and fed. As my mother descended into a period of twilight years of active alcoholism during my high school and college years, it all fell to me, keeping the household together.
In later years, when my mother was a recovering alcoholic and available once more to me as a person, we mended those fences and our last years together were idyllic. Mom died in 1991, my dad a few years earlier. We three loved each other very much, and I took every pain to be sure we were healed of childhood issues before they passed into larger life. That has been a blessing to me since they passed. I have no regrets, no unfinished business there.
As I grew in years and experience, I refined my “mission”. After meeting Don Elkins in 1960, and participating in the UFO Contactee meditation group which Don started in 1961, I began to feel that working with these beautiful ideas was my true vocation. Don and I partnered after my first marriage ended in 1968. We wrote our first book together, The Crucifixion of Esmerelda Sweetwater, in 1969 and formed a formal partnership in 1970, which we called The L/L Company. In 1976, when our second book was published, we altered the name to L/L Research, which name has remained our ‘doing-business-as” name ever since.
The mission flowered in 1974, when I learned to channel. For twelve years I had ducked that job and remained silent in the UFO Contactee group, being content to listen to the messages others channeled. When in the natural course of things the other channels found jobs elsewhere and left the group, we ran out of those channels and Don wanted to continue the experiment. So I learned as a favor to him. 35 years later, I am still channeling and will continue that service until people no longer request it.
Yet the heart of my mission on Earth is not doing but being – not channeling, writing and teaching but letting the Creator’s infinite love/light radiate through me and out into the world.
I am extremely fortunate in having been able to pursue this L/L Research work unbroken since the late ‘60s. Everyone in my current environment is of the greatest aid and support to me, from my husband, Jim McCarty, to Gary, Melissa and Romi, my research partners, and Ian and Steve E, L/L Research’s webmasters. So the mission is looking good. I am very happy to be working away at the writing, channeling and teaching and look forward to doing so until I am very old indeed!
Going on down the list of wanderer characteristics we come to being an outsider. I have always been a decided loner, happy with my own company. So the isolation I have always felt as regards my deepest concerns has been an easy thing to bear, unlike a lot of wanderers. Further, since I was 18, I have never lacked for good, spiritually oriented companionship. So while I do fit into the wanderer profile here, I have not yearned for company as much as many wanderers. I have been more than fortunate.
Feeling more kinship with the stars than with Earth is a basic mindset which has always been mine, and some of my most substantial work has been to encourage myself to root down into the Earth and love my adopted planet with my whole heart, mind and soul. The more I do that rooting and grounding, the richer and more beautiful my experience of life. However I do have to put myself to that work. Left to my instinctual biases, my mind is always elsewhere!
Continuing to go down my list of wanderer characteristics, we come to thinking in terms of ethics rather than in terms of how the world wags. And this characteristic is very strong in me. I have always been fascinated with any ethical situation and have pondered each and every situation I ever was offered with intensity and persistence.
To me there is beauty and resonance in choosing aright, and the greatest joy of my life seems to be involved with keeping every promise and vow I ever made. Indeed, I love virtue to the point that my choices of men throughout life have depended not on their looks or wealth but upon their characters and the beauty of their beings.
My second husband, Jim McCarty, is the best of men, a profound inspiration to me every day of my life. His character is sterling and his nature generous and sweet, and I am the luckiest girl in the world to be his mate.
The last of the characteristics listed above is feeling at home not in a place or situation but only with those of like mind. As Don Elkins, my beloved companion and research partner, used to say, “It’s not where you are, it’s who you’re with!” While the sentiment is ungrammatical, it is very true for me. I rejoice in the wonderful companions of Jim’s and my spiritual community and pray always that I may be a good “mother” to those many souls who have sought our organization and me out over the decades of my work with L/L Research.
Lastly, I would note that being a wanderer is not being an elitist. We are all in this together, Earth-natives, Martian-Terrans, Maldek-Terrans, Sirian-Terrans and all the rest. We are in no way better than anyone else on Earth. We are simply in a position to remember better times and to wish to share that love and light with the world, by how we act and who we are, by our thoughts, feelings and service. I rejoice in being here and serving, in loving and being loved. I am very glad I came!
I have known for a very long time that I was different from other people my age. Upon reaching adulthood, so-called, I found that I remained different, not just different from people my age but just in general. It is not that difference that comes out in adolescence when we are differentiating ourselves from our elders and mentors. I have never been a rebel. On the other hand, conforming for the sake of fitting in is not only not my choice but also impossible for me. I just don’t fit in the box and I never have!
What makes a wanderer know he is one? There are signs:
• Being sensitive to Planet Earth and having lots of allergies and health problems.
• Feeling that he is on a mission from God, as the Blues Brothers put it so aptly.
• Feeling isolated from others of his kind and yearning for someone with whom to share and converse.
• Feeling more kinship with the stars than with the society in which he lives.
• Thinking in terms of ethics and morality rather than what the surrounding culture feels is right.
• Finding no real home in anything except spiritual seeking and spiritually oriented company and conversation.
In my life, these have all cropped up. First, let's take being sensitive to Planet Earth. My whole life has been a story of illness and conditions that reflect my sensitivity to the vibrations of Earth. Born with birth defects in my left eye, which was pressing into the amygdale at birth, I was expected to die of trauma to the brain. I did not.
Then at age 2, I had a very tough bout of rheumatic fever, and every organ in my body was affected. I was expected to die. I did not.
At age 13, and again at age 15, my kidneys failed. I was expected to die. Again, I disappointed the doctors, who reluctantly retired from predictions, scratching their heads.
At age 65, I have collected a stack of chronic ailments – three rheumatoid diagnoses (arthritis, lupus and fibromyalgia), interstitial cystitis, GI tract diagnoses galore and allergies to everything under the sun, literally. My days are not spent in physical comfort. It’s just a matter of which ailment is most pressing. My wrists have been rebuilt four times each and I’ve had about two dozen other operations to keep my hands and feet, fingers and toes working. If it sounds drab, it is, but I look at the body drama as dues for being here on Earth and I am glad to pay them.
Then there is the “mission from God” thing. That mission came to me very early in life. Jesus was and is very real to me, but in early childhood I was with Him whenever I went to my “magic kingdom” which I could reach by focusing on the sunlight as it was refracted through the lenses of my glasses, which I placed on a slat of the Venetian blinds in my bedroom as a toddler. When I was supposed to be napping I would instead slide out on that focused beam of light from my glasses and go to a wonderful place where I could talk to the trees and animals. Jesus was there. He would sit beside me, hold my hand and look into my eyes. And I would know what it is to love. Those eyes of love have guided me ever since.
At that young age, I decided that I wished to spend my life in service to Jesus. This was all quite apart from any formal religious training. My walk with Jesus has always been mystical and non-dogmatic. I follow those eyes of love and do not worry about tenets of faith.
I had a wonderful childhood in some ways and a tough one in others. The good parts: I was able to spend two months every summer from age 5 to 17, dancing at Noyes Camp in Portland, Connecticut. Noyes Rhythm is a type of modern dance discipline which posits that we are all one, that all is alive and has a rhythm of its own, and that we can dance the horse, the star or the bear. I adored dancing, and also had six years of ballet before rebelling against the torture of toe shoes.
Another good part of my childhood was my friendship with horses, on and off in my youth. When I was seven through nine I lived on a farm which boarded retired horses and ponies and I spent many hours on their backs, riding bareback in the pasture. And at Noyes Camp, the staff acquired a horse named Thistle. Thistle was a renegade and would not allow anyone on her back except me. So I had my own horse, and rode constantly, whenever I could, from age 13 to 17. Horses are the best friends! Intelligent, funny, full of personality and loyal and affectionate beyond any telling, the horses I have known have been wonderful companions of my solitude.
Books constitute another great part of my childhood and my life in general. I read voraciously in childhood and have continued ever since, finding wonderful company in ideas, stories and myths.
Singing is the other excellent part of that period of my life, for I was always encouraged to sing, and performed as a member of church choirs and other choruses from age four, the first year I was big enough to hold songbooks. I have always loved performing.
The challenging part of my childhood was my first round of experiencing what I have come to feel is my incarnational lesson: loving without expectation of return. Both my parents were performers. They both had day jobs and were respected professionals, my dad being an engineer and my mom a licensed clinical psychologist and professor. But their hearts were in performing. They lived for their gigs! And the performance lifestyle is heavily alcohol and drug-related. They passed on the heavy drugs like cocaine and heroin, but they drank an ocean of alcohol. Engrossed in their own issues and pretty much self-involved, they left their kids alone and in my care. I was the eldest of three children, and from the age of seven, I was the designated babysitter.
Since I felt that my mission was to serve Jesus, this was OK with me, although I always resented that I never got paid for my constant baby-sitting. It was simply expected of me. I knew I was being taken advantage of, but could do nothing about that. So I gave up on achieving fairness and served faithfully.
My great disappointment there was that my folks, both being brilliant and perfectionistic, constantly related to me by explaining what I had not done correctly rather than by thanking me for keeping my brothers happy, safe and fed. As my mother descended into a period of twilight years of active alcoholism during my high school and college years, it all fell to me, keeping the household together.
In later years, when my mother was a recovering alcoholic and available once more to me as a person, we mended those fences and our last years together were idyllic. Mom died in 1991, my dad a few years earlier. We three loved each other very much, and I took every pain to be sure we were healed of childhood issues before they passed into larger life. That has been a blessing to me since they passed. I have no regrets, no unfinished business there.
As I grew in years and experience, I refined my “mission”. After meeting Don Elkins in 1960, and participating in the UFO Contactee meditation group which Don started in 1961, I began to feel that working with these beautiful ideas was my true vocation. Don and I partnered after my first marriage ended in 1968. We wrote our first book together, The Crucifixion of Esmerelda Sweetwater, in 1969 and formed a formal partnership in 1970, which we called The L/L Company. In 1976, when our second book was published, we altered the name to L/L Research, which name has remained our ‘doing-business-as” name ever since.
The mission flowered in 1974, when I learned to channel. For twelve years I had ducked that job and remained silent in the UFO Contactee group, being content to listen to the messages others channeled. When in the natural course of things the other channels found jobs elsewhere and left the group, we ran out of those channels and Don wanted to continue the experiment. So I learned as a favor to him. 35 years later, I am still channeling and will continue that service until people no longer request it.
Yet the heart of my mission on Earth is not doing but being – not channeling, writing and teaching but letting the Creator’s infinite love/light radiate through me and out into the world.
I am extremely fortunate in having been able to pursue this L/L Research work unbroken since the late ‘60s. Everyone in my current environment is of the greatest aid and support to me, from my husband, Jim McCarty, to Gary, Melissa and Romi, my research partners, and Ian and Steve E, L/L Research’s webmasters. So the mission is looking good. I am very happy to be working away at the writing, channeling and teaching and look forward to doing so until I am very old indeed!
Going on down the list of wanderer characteristics we come to being an outsider. I have always been a decided loner, happy with my own company. So the isolation I have always felt as regards my deepest concerns has been an easy thing to bear, unlike a lot of wanderers. Further, since I was 18, I have never lacked for good, spiritually oriented companionship. So while I do fit into the wanderer profile here, I have not yearned for company as much as many wanderers. I have been more than fortunate.
Feeling more kinship with the stars than with Earth is a basic mindset which has always been mine, and some of my most substantial work has been to encourage myself to root down into the Earth and love my adopted planet with my whole heart, mind and soul. The more I do that rooting and grounding, the richer and more beautiful my experience of life. However I do have to put myself to that work. Left to my instinctual biases, my mind is always elsewhere!
Continuing to go down my list of wanderer characteristics, we come to thinking in terms of ethics rather than in terms of how the world wags. And this characteristic is very strong in me. I have always been fascinated with any ethical situation and have pondered each and every situation I ever was offered with intensity and persistence.
To me there is beauty and resonance in choosing aright, and the greatest joy of my life seems to be involved with keeping every promise and vow I ever made. Indeed, I love virtue to the point that my choices of men throughout life have depended not on their looks or wealth but upon their characters and the beauty of their beings.
My second husband, Jim McCarty, is the best of men, a profound inspiration to me every day of my life. His character is sterling and his nature generous and sweet, and I am the luckiest girl in the world to be his mate.
The last of the characteristics listed above is feeling at home not in a place or situation but only with those of like mind. As Don Elkins, my beloved companion and research partner, used to say, “It’s not where you are, it’s who you’re with!” While the sentiment is ungrammatical, it is very true for me. I rejoice in the wonderful companions of Jim’s and my spiritual community and pray always that I may be a good “mother” to those many souls who have sought our organization and me out over the decades of my work with L/L Research.
Lastly, I would note that being a wanderer is not being an elitist. We are all in this together, Earth-natives, Martian-Terrans, Maldek-Terrans, Sirian-Terrans and all the rest. We are in no way better than anyone else on Earth. We are simply in a position to remember better times and to wish to share that love and light with the world, by how we act and who we are, by our thoughts, feelings and service. I rejoice in being here and serving, in loving and being loved. I am very glad I came!