Tuesday, December 25, 2012

My Journey through the 11:11 Doorway (Part Three)


The ability to enjoy solitude is a characteristic common to all explorers of inner space.

Since my early teens I have been intrigued by the esoteric far more than the exoteric. Being the youngest in the family with an 8-year gap between me and my next brother afforded me the luxury of inhabiting my own space with no siblings to distract me. I grew up with plenty of solitude, especially in the afternoons when both my parents were at work. 

I learnt how to entertain myself for hours, exploring our back garden with its four mango trees and a thick morning glory hedge acrawl with ants, ladybirds and spiders. Just beyond the hedge was a narrow drainage ditch with a fascinating ecosystem of tadpoles, baby fishes, water snails and weeds. I could spend hours in the back garden, alone with my thoughts or capturing ladybirds for my miniature circus (putting them on their backs and watching them roll their eggs round and round with their legs). When I grew bored with this game, I’d release them in the garden. 

Sometimes I would just lie on the couch and daydream about making epic movies, visualizing the opening sequences and composing the soundtrack music in my head. Other times I would hang out in the kitchen with our China-born housekeeper and bombard her with questions about her life.

A major event occurred when I was 11 that totally altered my destiny. I was in Primary Six and one day a teacher stepped into the classroom and called out a few names, mine included. He said we were to assemble outside the headmaster’s office in the next few minutes. I was thrilled, thinking we had been handpicked for some special honor, like designing and painting a new mural or initiating a school magazine. Instead, we were hectored by a stern-faced, cane-wielding headmaster who declared us to be the “bad hats” of the school. Me a “bad hat”? I couldn’t believe that anyone could possibly see me as a “bad hat.” Okay, I was among the talkative ones in class, and was fond of making wisecracks – but that was as far as my sense of mischief went. To me a “bad hat” meant a hooligan, school bully, someone who got involved in gangfights and vandalism. 

Anyway, there was no one to defend us and we weren’t allowed to argue our own case. The headmaster acted as jury, judge and executioner. Each of us received a few strokes of the cane and were instructed to hand a sealed letter to our parents. I was deeply wounded in my soul by this incident – but, in retrospect, it served me well in later life – because the profound sense of injustice I felt completely shattered any illusion I may have had about the wisdom of authority figures. Thereafter, I consciously chose to be my own best authority on everything. I no longer looked to emblems of external authority for guidance.


It was around this time that I made contact with my own Atman or Oversoul. Buckminster Fuller calls it the Phantom Captain – he was on the verge of suicide at the age of 32 when his Phantom Captain spoke to him. Whatever name you prefer, I thought of it as “Jesus” at the time. So I would have long chats with “Jesus” every night and it was a calm, clear, supportive intelligence that was never harsh or judgmental. 

Eventually, there came a moment when I merged with this “Jesus” entity and fully integrated it within my operating system. My attempts to persuade others to do the same weren’t particularly successful. In most instances, hardcore believers accused me of blasphemy or spiritual arrogance. 

Or else they simply assumed, as my parents did, that I had gone mad. And so I found myself in an asylum for 3 months (which proved to be an entirely educational experience for a 19-year-old). After that I learned to keep my mouth shut – unless asked for my opinion by someone genuinely interested in hearing my personal insights.

I also realized that the intellect, with language as its tool, was an astonishingly devious device which could, using cold logic, rationalize just about anything – including cruelty, torture, social injustice and tyranny. So I learned to rely more and more on intuition, and to trust my gut feelings over other people’s learned opinions.

This is why when I came across Solara’s writings on Guardian Angels and 11:11 Doorways, my intellect didn’t get in the way and dismiss it all as pure fantasy or poppycock. Indeed, the wide ground covered in her writings convinced me that she had explored many different paths and was able to integrate all of it into her own personal cosmomythology in an enchantingly feminine, imaginative and undogmatic manner. Solara’s ability to speak from an angelic as well as entirely human perspective was most impressive. Although my mind was unable to understand the significance of the 11:11, my entire being accepted it as a cosmic wake-up call – and I began to see 11:11 more and more often, in digital clocks, car licence plates, hidden in the most obvious places.

I had spent years devouring whatever material I could find that might shed some light on the mystery of existence. My interests were eclectic in that I enjoyed science fiction as much as historical works. The question of extraterrestrial intervention in planetary affairs was as cogent to me as speculations on the nature of Consciousness.

I delved into books on Zen, was inspired by the Tao Te Ching, collected a set of Alice Bailey’s writings, joined a Tantric cult, consumed classic studies on the occult like Pauwels and Bergier’s The Morning of the Magicians, and Colin Wilson’s encyclopedic research into a wide spectrum of metaphysical phenomena. I enjoyed reading about fairies and pagan magick, and was fascinated by the Arthurian legends and the mystery of the Holy Grail.

I investigated Aleister Crowley, Alan Watts, Bertrand Russell, Robert Anton Wilson, Tim Leary, John C. Lilly, Terence McKenna, G. Spencer Brown, and Buckminster Fuller. I also read all of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series, Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan stories, and Robert A. Heinlein’s brave explorations of alternative relationship scenarios. 

That’s how I was able to maintain my own left-brain, right-brain balance; a keen sense of adventure and, most importantly, a healthy sense of humor. It wasn’t till March 1993 that I finally met Solara and experienced a complete emotional body clearing and a whole new high that lasted several years.