My Road Home

I spent my first eighteen years on the planet trying to keep my spirit alive in a small borough in the backwoods mountains of western Pennsylvania. I was nurtured by two parents who actually loved each other... and by Pan and his friends in the forest glen and brook. I wasn't destined to speak directly with the wiley, overgrown nature energy until later in life, but my young heart was taught and protected by him and his legions of water sprites, elves, fairies and devas in the moss hollows, rock castles, tree forts, water rafts and other special, secret places in which I would take daily refuge from the impinging adult world.

My father was a lawyer and village mayor, so I learned quickly to play along with the surface appearance of sanity and fulfillment with football, proms and college dreams. I did gratefully receive a yearly transfusion of alternative reality by summering at an upstate New York art colony, where I reveled with poets, actors and sculptors. Here for my fellow artists, I modeled the body that I'd hewn on the muddy playing fields of my rough Steeltown home. These worlds were dimensions and eras apart.

I escaped to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, which was a welcome cauldron of social and political radicals at the time. I made provocative, experimental films until my new freedom was abruptly halted by blindness. After two very long months of no sight, I "went spiritual," as I described it then. I talked consciously with God for the first time and we struck a deal:

If I get my sight back, God, I will never complain again! Rather than lament or deplore my lot in life, I will search, explore, experiment and do everything else in my power to discover the real reason things are the way they are. I won't sell you or myself short by settling for surface appearances, theoretical explanations or excuses. I'll go as deep as necessary to find the truth behind circumstances. I'll keep looking into every situation until I'm totally certain that I have found the genuine origin of each creation.

Within three days of striking this bargain, I had my eyesight... and my life... back! And I was on a new track with new buddies. St. Germain, of the Ascended Master crew of Jesus and friends, began to appear to me in subtle form and speak to me of the sacred blueprint, God's... and mine!

For the last thirty years I have been blessed, and hounded, by my friendship with the Masters and by my irrepressible search for the true nature of reality. I have both cultivated... and resisted and sabotaged... this mission by expressing myself as an acupuncturist, rebirther, therapist, yoga teacher, natural foods chef, and Avatar Master. These and other assorted mantles helped me to nurture and share my authentic gifts, but I also used them as cloaks to hide my real essence... from myself, as well as from others.

My seeking finally came to an end several years ago in Hawaii. For two days I experienced myself in a state of being that I have only previously glimpsed for moments at a time. For lack of any other way to describe it, I call it "grace," a word I've never used before in my life. I was willingly overwhelmed by a life force of unconditional, non-judgmental love, a tidal wave of totally accepting energy. While in this vortex I found that I could let up any fear, limitation or trauma, and it would evaporate away. This opening and discovery set in motion an unfolding that is currently expressing itself as: The Dream-a Gathering of Equals. In the clarity, mutual respect and safety of the Gatherings, I am now keeping my promise to God... and to my Self:

I am uncovering the true reason things happen as they do.

I tap directly into the source that gives birth to all things.

I drink from the well of direct knowing.

- Keith Varnum