When I experienced the moment of clarity during my flight over Cyprus, I started to feel a discomfort in the middle finger of my right hand. During the weeks that followed, I felt increasing pain as a small blister bubbled up on the joint where my finger met my hand. The size of the bubble grew and the pain intensified and began to travel to other parts of my body.
Eventually, the bubble of pain traveled to my spine and back and my entire body was in knots. I kept up with my business travels, though the pain was more and more debilitating. On a trip to Europe, I traveled with a bag of ice tied to my back. As the ice melted, it soaked the back of my shirt and the top of my trousers. I attended important meetings lying on the floor, talking to the other participants who were sitting in chairs. Finally, I became so ill I could hardly walk. For several months, there were many times I had to crawl on the floor to answer the phone or go to the bathroom. I consulted many doctors who recommended all sorts of medicines, both traditional and alternative. All of them caused severe side effects. I was admitted in and out of hospitals. Nothing seemed to work. Doctors couldn’t explain my illness. Somehow, I knew it was the physical expression of the struggle going on within me.
I knew I was being called upon to do something for the poor, and I was resisting it. I was very nervous and fought the idea intensely. I prayed and tried to tell the calling to get off my back and find someone else. Other times I would shake my fists, using curse words to make myself clear: “You’ve got the wrong person!”
One reason for my hesitancy was that I came from an upper middle-class family and had little contact with the poor or people in the villages. When I moved to the U.S., I was lucky enough to find a good job, and I had a wonderful family. I had absolutely no desire to leave that or to do something in which I had no experience or know-how.
But the calling was beyond my ability to resist.
Psychologically, it tore me apart. My long illness was a time for intense dialogue with myself. I had all the time to dwell on “Who am I?” Going down and down the layers of my fears, I could feel that the source of my fears was being without money. But from where that fear emerged was a mystery. I could see how that fear had seduced me, how it led me to hide behind the cover of ambition and success. But my fear was beyond reason. It would send chills through my spine and I would wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night.
In the beginning, I was baffled by my ailment. Then I was angry—angry at the ailment, angry at myself, angry at the doctors, and angry at the world. This was followed by a period of bargaining—OK Spirit, if you will do this, I will do that. Nothing worked. My ailment kept getting worse.
Next was a period of defeat and depression, during which I felt I would never get better. Then came acceptance of the defeat. This was followed by a period of cleansing—of my anger and the knots tied within me. During this time, I had experiences and heard sounds that I could neither comprehend nor welcome.
One day, in 1980, my sister suggested I try fasting.
“I have never fasted before and I have no intention of fasting now,” I told her.
But that day, somehow, I didn’t feel hungry, and that feeling kept on going. For the next six days I didn’t eat anything. I drank only a third of a glass of water during those six days. On the fifth day of the fast, something took place for which I have no understanding. For a complete lack of words, I would say it was a vision.
It was as if a curtain opened and I found myself back behind the scene of a play. There I saw that everything is connected, one thing leads to the other. I was going deeper and deeper behind the stage with dizzying speed. Then it stopped. No motion. It was dark, yet I could see. There was a man. He seemed old. He was alone; there was nothing else around. The man was floating in a thick vacuum, like in space. The scene was fuzzy and yet there was a sense of recognition. I know this man. I have seen him somewhere. The man was dying of starvation. There was total calm, a knowing presence. My eyes started to adjust. The man came into focus. He was me. I was not surprised, as if I had been expecting to meet myself there. He could see and feel me as I was seeing him. I felt the presence of a magnetic power.
Where is this power coming from? Then I realized this magnetic force was coming out of a commitment the man had made to something eons ago, before his death.
That force and I are the same! I am that presence! The link between me, the dying old man, and me, the 20th century man, had never been broken—it was one long, continuous chain. What I had believed to be my mistakes in the past, were not mistakes. My learning and completion of those lessons helped prepare me for the next lesson. I realized there are no mistakes in nature. It was clear to me that there was a meaning to all that had happened and was happening in my life.
We are the source. We are the source!
A conviction beyond belief or words emerged. This experience was perhaps just a split second, but I was filled with gratitude and love. I fell to my knees and kissed the ground. I knew who I was and what I was doing on this earth. I vowed to spend the rest of my life fighting world hunger.
I got up and realized I could walk again. I went for a five-mile walk, something I had not done in almost two years.
I was now seeing everything from a new perspective. I could no longer relate to the old perspectives I had held so strongly only a few months ago.
My healing was followed by a new kind of frustration. I knew what I had to do, but I had no idea how to go about it. I had no more interest in business, but I needed to work to feed my family. I wanted to share my new-found world, but I was unable to communicate. I did not have the words. My friends and family thought I had gone crazy.
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