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To say that I was new to this thing that this guy, Kevin Pearson, was about to do to me was an understatement. As I said,
my wife and I met him in 1993. I was still a full fledged member of the Unification Church studying very hard at the Unification
Theological Seminary. Hey, while I’m on the subject, let me tell you a little about my experience at UTS.
UTS was founded by Reverend Moon in 1975. Of course, he wanted as many of his members to be highly educated. His mission was
to reach out and unite Christianity but he really can’t do that unless his membership body is equipped with sharp minds
to persuade Christians to his way of thinking. And brother, there was going to be a lot of persuading going on to convince
them that he had come as the messiah with a new message. So, that’s why he founded the seminary, to equip us with the
tools so that we could go out into the world to bring his message.
UTS is an institution that offers a masters degree program in Religious Education. That’s what I had earned at the end
of my three years there. Usually a graduate degree program takes two years but as you’ll see I had a most unusual approach
to higher education.
You see, I dropped out of school before graduation from high school. It’s regrettable but I began to lose interest in
my education after the tenth grade. You can understand, it was the 70’s, a tumultuous period in American history, political
and social upheaval, wasn’t it? Oh…that was the sixties. Sorry. But it was still so hard to concentrate on listening
to the teacher and all after I had just smoked a joint. Ah yes, now we get to the unvarnished truth about myself.
Yes, my name is James Kovic and unlike President Bill Clinton, I did inhale and very deeply I might add. Was that the
reason for skidding down the slippery slope of scholastic ineptitude? Honestly, no. Hell, a lot of people smoked grass and
damnit despite being so defensive and a liar about it all, we all know that Bill Clinton was smoking joints like the best
of em’. It didn’t seem to do him any harm. He became president. It wasn’t smoking grass; it was this battle
raging on inside of me with my stalwart ego.
You see, all this time in my adolescence my higher self was nudging me, trying to guide me towards living as I was meant to
live, a life centered on Love through the heart. But there was all of this baggage, these issues that needed to be dealt with
first. So, here I am, a teenager. It’s one thing to be a teenager and to have your body maturing all over the place.
You know, the voice change, the facial hair and the sexuality thing. Boys have to go through so much when they reach the age
of 13 in our society. It’s so much. And then on top of all of that I’m getting these subtle messages and come
ons from these higher spiritual realms. You see, I was cut off from all of that, thanks to my mother’s shortsightedness
and the fact that she had gone through hell raising four kids before I came along. So, my awareness was down and all that
I have for reference to understand any kind of spirituality is my Roman Catholic upbringing. That’s not really much
help because they tend to discourage their people from having spiritual experiences unless their sanctioned by the pope or
something.
So, I was like alone with all of this input coming into me, like static coming out of a radio receiver because you’re
not tuned to the right channel or you don’t have the right receiver. And man, for me it wasn’t until I was 45
years old. Fourty five years old for god’s sake, until I began to figure out how to tune in through meditation
and listen to the voice inside of me.
Lucky for me, I didn’t really know or comprehend just how alone I really was. If I was I don’t think my life would
have lasted beyond my adolescent years. Lucky for me, information wasn’t the most important thing for me to have. It
would come later when I was ready for it.
So, I drifted through my teenage years, had a couple of good close friends and I learned how to play a musical instrument.
This is one of the things that got me through all of that adolescent stuff. I learned how to play the guitar. What’s
more, my brother, Jack learned how to play too. My brother, at a young age was a very proficient guitarist and when I got
good enough to play rhythm guitar I would back him up as he played lead. Man, we played for hours and hours. I usually played
until my fingers bled and then when my fingers healed and they developed callouses on them we’d play for longer durations.
My mom bought me this really nice Guild Medeira acoustic guitar for my birthday and I loved that guitar. Jack had an ovation
and we just jammed and loved playing together. Our friends would hang around and listen to us. That’s about as far as
it got. Jack started playing in a local rock band but I wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t play with people because
I didn’t know how to play in other keys. You got to know that to play with other people. But I got to a point in my
skill as a guitarist where I could just play music that I loved so that it could fill this empty space inside of me. That’s
all I wanted to do. There’s a difference between listening to music and actually playing it. When you’re playing
it, like on the guitar or any other instrument, you become the music and you connect with that spiritual magic that is present
with a really wonderful song. That’s why music is so spiritual. It’s a high. It takes you places beyond the ego,
beyond the rational mind, beyond this physical plane if you let it.
That’s what’s so cool about The Grateful Dead. They wrote this really great music, sometimes it was country, or
western or blues and then they would take their music and do these long jams with it. That’s when it got so good. That’s
when the music began playing the band. That’s when The Grateful Dead occurred. That magical moment in this bands music—usually
when performed live in concert—when the music transitioned into this portal that took you into an alternate reality,
the fourth dimension. That’s just a realm of archetypes and visions, symbolism and how we imprint our thoughts upon
the world. That’s when your thoughts begin to create and when you get to that level of being, then things start to get
really cool.
But that’s where I wanted to be, given the fact that I was this hurt individual who hadn’t worked out his emotions
and feelings and hadn’t really learned how to love. I was feeling sorry for myself. I was a very pathetic and struggling
teenager and this was the only way I knew how to cope with it.
Things didn’t really start to change in my life for the better until I joined the Unification Church. Yea I know how
I’ve gone on and on about how awful the church is. Well, from my perspective as a 35 year old in 1995 who had finally
been able to go beyond that “feeling sorry for myself” stage and begin to start working with myself and my emotions
and issues and start walking down my own individual spiritual path rather than following someone else’s religion, The
Unification Church is very limiting for me. But for a pathetic 19 year old who was rudderless and in need of guidance, Reverend
Moon’s church was just the thing I needed.
Yea I can almost hear you ex-members murmuring to yourselves right now about how I fit the cookie cutter personality of a
person who is always most likely to join a cult of some kind or another. Yea I did. I was vulnerable and I got sucked into
Reverend Moon’s church. Now I said “sucked”; I didn’t say suckered. I don’t believe I was taken
advantage of by anybody. I made my own decision to join the Unification Church and therefore I am accountable for my own life.
I wasn’t tricked or cajoled or forced to do anything. I definitely wasn’t brainwashed. My parents certainly weren’t
in any position, financially to have me deprogrammed like some other parents I’ve heard of.
There was one time when a professional deprogrammer came up to me on the street when I was fundraising for the church on the
sidewalks of New York City. He had someone with him as he was mocking me and telling me how foolish I was for being a member
of this church. He even said that he could have me deprogrammed just like that. He’d give me an hour before I
cracked. Oh no, not without at least $50,000 in cash from my parents or a legal guardian he couldn’t. Deprogrammers
don’t do what they do out of the goodness of their own heart to rescue poor, misguided young people who hook up with
cults. They don’t work for free. They damn sure make certain that their clients pay up before they lay their hands on
that snotty nosed kid who fell into a cult like the Unification Church or the Hare Krishnas. They’re actually in the
same league with snake oil salesmen and other common criminals.
Well, let’s get to the good stuff, shall we? Let me tell you one fine day, oh about 29 years ago, when I first met someone
from The Unification Church.
I was living in southern California back in 1979 and working for an organization started by then governor, Jerry Brown, called
The California Conservation Corps. If you click on that link you’ll find out, if
you don’t happen to know already, what a fantastic organization this really is. I was a part of it two years after it
started in 1976. How did I end up in the state of California as a kid growing up on Long Island in New York? Kind of a long
story but I have a brother Ron. Ron Kovic, perhaps you’ve heard of him. He wrote
“Born On The Fourth Of July” but you probably just saw the
film by Oliver Stone starring Tom Cruise that came out in 1989. Anyway, Ron lived out in California and I got sick and
tired of being at home so he invited me to come and hang out with him. Back then Ron lived the romantic lifestyle of an Vietnam
Veteran turned antiwar protestor who wrote this really great book called “Born On The Fourth Of July”. Ron knew
lots of people and the first thing these group of eclectic, intellectual avante garde hippie types did when they saw Ron Kovic’s
15 year old brother was exclaim: “Oh wow, you’re Ron’s brother. Ron, I didn’t know you had a brother.
This is so cool. Hey, Ron can I give Jimmie a toke of this joint?” I didn’t put up a fuss as you can well imagine.
So when the novelty of being Ron Kovic’s kid brother wore off and believe me it didn’t take long, I settled in,
got a job and that job was working for The California Conservation Corps or C.C.C. as they call it. The CCC was great. They
paid me five bucks an hour to work with a team of fifteen people in southern California on flood control. You see, after the
smoke clears from California’s annual forest fires which spread into house and town fires then the rains come in the
winter months. Well when there’s no vegetation to speak of on those hillsides then you have what they call mud slides.
Talk about slippery slopes and all. Man, it’s a mess. But that’s what the CCC is for. We were contracted to go
out and erect these steel barriers along those barren, rain soaked hills and hopefully solve the problem.
There’s one story that I must tell you and then I’ll tell you how I transitioned from the CCC to the HSAUWC. That’s
the long name for the Unification Church. Well, we were out in Santa Barbara on the beach filling sand bags because a storm
was approaching and we needed to build a wall of sand bags as the high tide was swelling from the storm, at least as long
as we could. Well, we didn’t realize just how quick that storm began to rear it’s ugly head when suddenly someone
gets everyone’s attention and we all turn our heads toward the ocean. Out in the distance was this huge, I mean huge
water spout. It was like a tornado out in the ocean and it was coming our way. Well, that was enough incentive to get us
to speed it up and double our efforts.
That’s about as exciting as life in the CCC ever got for me. One time, though we went up to La Honda in Northern California
to plant pine trees where there had been a lot of trees cut down by a lumber company. I remember one night where we were staying
when I went outside, late at night, and the night sky was just full of stars. Being a boy who grew up on Long Island just
50 miles from New York City I had never seen such a sky like that before. It was awesome.
Well, it seems that my employment with the CCC got cut short. It was my fault. I got caught smoking a joint on the job. It
was one of those things that get your ass fired really quick in the CCC. So I found my way up to San Francisco and looked
up a friend of my brother Ron’s. He was a disc jockey named Doctor Rock. He was the foremost expert on Rock & Roll in
the bay area. Well, Doctor Rock put me up in his home for a while but then when he started seeing this woman he said I had
to leave. So, I got a hotel room in downtown somewhere. It was the end of May of 1979 and I was feeling pretty lousy with
having lost my job and having worn out my welcome with Doctor Rock and all.
I noticed, one day, that I had accumulated a lot of stuff in my travels so I decided to lighten my load. It was an interesting
decision that I made at the time. I didn’t really have any plans to go anywhere yet I felt the need to only have with
me what was necessary. So, the next morning I packed all of that stuff in my framed backpack and mailed it to my home. As
I was coming back from doing that I remember passing by a young woman who was standing behind a card table on a street corner
with some books and pamphlets spread over it. But I just kept going. I wasn’t in the mood for seeing what she happened
to be selling.
I needed to take the train back to my hotel room so I went to the BART train station. That’s like the subway system
that runs throughout the bay area in San Francisco. I paid for my ticket and then went down the stairs to the platform to
wait for my train. Suddenly I began hearing a voice calling from somewhere.
“Hey you!”
I looked up and I saw this red headed young woman leaning over the rail on the upper concourse floor looking at me.
“Do you want to come over for dinner and hear an inspirational talk?”
She didn’t wait for my answer. She immediately began writing something on a business card.
“Here, catch this.”
The business card fell out of her hand and then it twirled down about 150 feet to where I was standing. With the agility of
an baseball outfielder I stepped forward toward my estimate of where I thought the trajectory of that business card would
take it and caught it in the palm of my hands. Feeling so proud of myself for accomplishing this unbelievable feat, I smiled
then looked up to where she was standing and she was gone.
I looked at the card. Her name was Annie Newman and underneath her address she had written down directions for how to get
to where they were having this dinner and talk. So I took note of the time it would start and shoved it in my pocket.
I wandered around Berkeley that afternoon. I happened upon a local band that just happened to be playing some Dead tunes.
That was lively. There was this woman dancing naked in the crowd. Everyone was generally having a good time. After a while
I lost interest in it though. The band began playing some of their own songs and I really didn’t get into it much. So
I left.
What was funny was that on two occasions I met two separate men who seemed very friendly and began asking if I was happy with
my life. “Of course I wasn’t”, I said to myself. “But I’m not going to lay my soul bare before
you.” I sensed neither of these two guys were the least bit sincere so in both cases I wiggled my way out by saying
I was late for an appointment.
There was this guy that I met while at the Grateful Dead clone concert. We had gotten to talking and he asked me if I wanted
to see a movie at the local theater. I hated to spend my evening alone so I agreed. And as I was walking in the direction
of that theater I recalled that crazy lady in the train station that I met that morning. I reached down into my pocket and
fished out the business card. That entire scene of seeing her perched up on the concourse level calling down to me replayed
in my mind. Who was she and why would she go to all of the trouble to invite me over?
I looked again at the address and the directions she scribbled down on the card. Whoa, that cross-street is right up here
and it’s six o’clock right now. Jeez, that’s what time she said to come over. Well, it’s too late
now. It’ll take at least 20 minutes to get there. That’s Hearst street, all the way up that freakin’ hill.
I went over to the phone booth and called the phone number on the card. No one answered. I let it ring like ten times and
still no one picked up the phone. Well, she’s not there. I no longer felt bad. Seems like she stood me up. But then
I couldn’t help but allow that scene at the BART station to play again and again in my mind. Just the tone of her voice
when she said, “Hey You.” That’s all she ever said to me. Hey You, but it was the sweetest sound
of hey you that I’d ever heard in my life.
And it wasn’t just her voice. I caught a glimpse, even if it was a fleeting one, of her face. She was really pretty.
I had known a girl with red hair before. I went out with her in ninth grade. I thought she loved me but then at this party
we both went to I found out just how much she loved me when I found her with one of my friends from the gymnastic team. She
was in his arms over in the corner of the living room next to the fireplace. There was nothing I could do. I wouldn’t
have stood a chance against him. He was much stronger than me and I was much too wasted from drinking six beers to do anything
about it. And to throw salt over an open wound, I had to ride home with her to my house.
But this wasn’t the same. And somehow I felt I knew who this woman was. I don’t know, it felt like one of those
déjà vu experiences again. I know I’ve met her before. There was this glow about her drawing me to her. I couldn’t
escape this attraction that I had for her. And it wasn’t sexual either. It was tugging at my heart somehow. But why
didn’t she answer the phone? Was she home? I had to find out what was going on here.
I hoofed up the long hill until I got to Hearst Street. Then when I got to the top of the hill I saw this enormous home. In
fact, the street was lined with homes that looked like mini mansions. I came to the one that matched the address on the card
and rang the doorbell. It didn’t work so I knocked really hard on the door. Someone finally came to the door, a pleasant
woman with plain facial features in the late twenties. No glow around her.That’s not her. I told her that I’m
looking for Annie Newman. She asked me to come in and led me down a long hallway. It opened up into what looked like a parlor
and then she led me around the corner to the right. Then I saw lots of other people. They were seated in rows facing a makeshift
stage where a young man was speaking. The woman who invited me in showed me to a seat in the back. Then the woman walked up
to the front row to a person seated in the second chair from the right and lightly touched her shoulder. She whispered in
her ear and then she turned her head around and looked at me. It was her. That was Annie and she was still glowing.
She smiled at me. It warmed my heart like I’ve never felt before and then I smiled back at her.
For a brief moment. No, for much longer than that I was captivated by her. But why? Was it love at first sight? No, because
I’ve seen her before. This is definitely Déjà vu. Then I’ve known her before, but when and where? I just didn’t
have a clue but I kept staring at her even after she turned around and continued listening to the speaker. I couldn’t
give a damn about what that guy was saying. I was just so caught up in this feeling. I felt surrounded by them and these disjointed
memories that seemed to play over and over in my mind about who she was but I could only interpret it as static yet there
was this undercurrent of those memories that made me feel so good and to be around her again.
My Spiritual Path Part 5
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