California Guru

For Christmas John gives me a briefcase and an injunction. "Get an attitude, go downtown, and get a job!"
I already believe I have a job, and am doing it well, I am rasing our children and teaching parenting part time at a Family Service organization. But that clearly is not enough. John insists that I pay back the $25,000 that we borrowed from my mother to save him from bankruptcy. I am doing so, at the rate of $250 a month. in order to get a handle on what I could do to earn more money, a friend of mine recommends that I take a course that she has recently taken called the Art of Personal Marketing. The course promises to give me a clue as to what I would love to do as a career or business.

I find myself at the address my friend has given me to attend a guest evening with the course leader who is apparently coming from San Francisco. It turns out to be a mansion on Marine Drive, which is millionaire row in Vancouver. There are many cars, and balloons outside to indicate where I am to go. As I walk up the front path I find myself behind what could only be described as an entourage. A woman in a long flowing brown Egyptian cotton gown is surrounded by people as she enters the house. She is speaking with a broad New York accent, which I later discover is from the Bronx. She seems to know many of the people there, greeting them by name, asking about their family. She appears to be much loved and celebrated.
I think to myself "California Guru."

The living room is filled with people, at least sixty, sitting on the floor surrounding the arm chair where the woman named Sandy Levey sits. There is a lovely bouquet of flowers at her side, and a lit candle. The room hushes. She starts to talk and the jargon of the New Age, which I have had no exposure to whatsoever, pours out of her. At one point she says something about someone telling her that she thinks that what occurs in her seminars is a change "at the cellular level." What the hell is she talking about? How can something that happens in a weekend seminar change your cells, for God's sake? This is crazy! I'm getting out of here. But I can't leave until the talk is over. At the end of the talk Sandy says that she is available to have private interviews with people and there is a sign up list. Much to my amazement I find myself lining up.

As my turn comes and I enter the room where Sandy is sitting, I notice that there is a soft golden light around everything, especially her head. It is extremely quiet and peaceful . I sit down and wait, not knowing what to say. Sandy says, "So why do you think you might want to take this course?"
"I didn't say I wanted to take this course! It's SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS!!! My husband would never let me soend that kind of money on myself!"
Silence.
"How old are you?"
"I'll be 46 on Bastille Day, July 14th."
"You're not getting any younger."
Long silence.
"You know, if you have a problem with your foot you go to the very best foot doctor in the world, If you have a problem with your soul, you go the very best soul doctor in the world."
Now this struch me immediately as weird. I had started wearing high heels again in an attempt to get an attitude and get a job. My feet, especially my left one,which had not worn heels for ten years, were KILLING ME!"
"How did you know about my problem with my foot? Are you psychic or something?
"Sandy, with a face like a pixie crossed with Yoda, tilted her head and smiled. "I have those abilities, yes."
I was a goner. For some weird reason this woman, without saying a thing, had spellbound me as if she had seen right into my soul. I somehow knew that my soul was in trouble. I was going home to TELL my husband that I was taking this course.

In one extraordinary weekend in June of 1989 at the Vancouver Courthouse, I
I spent the weekend writing and working on my dream, backed up by five massage therapists with tables in the back of the room, and many different assistants helping people identify their dreams. Finally at the end of the weekend, I presented my new career to the huge hall filled with people, I realized that what I wanted to do was become an international seminar leader and speaker like the leader of the course, Sandy Levey, and inspire people to create outrageous marvellous lives and live their lives out loud! The applause was deafening. As the evening progressed, each one of those people, at two minutes per person, presented their dream to the audience, and won enormous support. There was a concert pianist from San Francisco. There was a singer from Vancouver who subsequently had a concert at the Vancouver Cultural Center, their was another wonderful singer named Edith Wallace who was nine months pregnant and ready to deliver at a moment's notice. She was hysterically funny. Each one had some gem of talent or skill to offer. I felt I had discovered a whole new world. I came home, exhilarated and planned a party for all seventy five people. They came. They were all over the house and the lawn. I loved it. John hated it. It was the beginning of a whole new life for me, and the beginning of the end of my marriage.

A few days later, when John completely rejected my enthusiastic pleas that he get involved, that there was something here, a force that deserved reckoning with, I realized that I needed to do a LOT more work. I phoned Sandy in San Francisco and told her what was going on in my mind. She suggested that I come to San Francisco and do the course over. She was leaving for Sweden to get married and might not be back again. This was the last course she was offering in North America for the time being. So I did it. I flew to San Francisco for the weekend.While I was there, I realized that I had skills and talents enough to do anything I wanted in my life. I was enormously gifted, and all I had to do was decide what the purpose of my life was, find a form to fulfull that purpose, and I was off. The purpose I came up with was to inspire people to live their dreams and to express themselves creatively. I had inspired my husband to achieve excellence, and now it was my turn.

Sandy now lived in Sweden and came to Canada to lead workshops. I attended every one of them, and wrote down everything she said. I even invited my eighty year old mother to attend one called The Art of Surrender. It utterly changed my perception of my life. I was inspired. Over the following year I hosted a show on television (albeit interviewing Sandy) and Sandy invited me to write her book on the Art of Personal Marketing with her. She had a contract from Prentice Hall. We spent a marvellous week on Cortez Island at Hollyhock farms writing. We did eighty pages in five days. The book seemed to write itself.
I want to share the enormous benefit I received by promoting her work. I spend hours on the phone, enrolling for her workships. John is getting more and more irritated, especially at the long distance phone bills to Sweden!

But on the whole, things are good. We have a wonderful life. I am loving being a mother. Although I am only making around ten thousand a year working for Sandy, and another few thousand as a teacher of parenting, my dream to become a spiritual counsellor and an international inspirational speaker, writer, and teacher seems to be developing nicely. Thanks to John's support in the early years, I have already earned my Masters in Counselling Psychology. I am now working as a counsellor with clients in my living room, doing Voice Dialogue, Gestalt therapy dream work and helping people to identify and live their dreams.

There is just the small detail of two young children to raise. And the enormous distaste and resentment of my husband for this new turn of events.