First, when there is no one left to be "enlightened" it happens! So the "my" and "I" become ciphers to designate "this one", though there is truly no real entity called "self" left. (There never was a self,...  just the illusion of "self" each of us "fabricates" as the one experiencing this life.) This has been true for "me" since 4/4/94, i.e., the ongoing experience of life including , of course "this life", but without the illusory "subject" experiencing it.

Since I asked for feedback on the "Cosmic Wave" page, it has been coming in many forms. So I've made an effort to speak more plain English,  share more from the heart ,and now to "flesh out" the story of my awakening in a "down to earth" way. I ask the reader to trust, for at least one read-through, that this is not an "ego trip", i.e., that "my ego" is now a transparent set of programs for functioning in this world of consensus reality. You will benefit from this suspension of judgment by allowing "my Truth" to resonate with "your Truth." Thank you!

Much of my life as a "visionary mystic" has not been" down to earth" at all, but here is a brief version of "my story", by request.
My first memories start in my second year of life. My parents, older brother and I  had left  the desert of Yuma AZ. and arrived at a paradise of fruit orchards, berry patches and a vegetable garden,...  my grandparents' place near Glenwood Springs CO. This arrival is my first memory. I was in awe of the fruitful abundance and happily "grazed" the strawberry and raspberry patches. I eventually learned to climb the many varieties of fruit trees and delight in sweet, ripe fruit like "dark ripe" bing cherries. ...   And I especially enjoyed the treetop view, which led, in later years, to ecstatic climbs up the tallest trees and mountains around me for that "Overview " and "Peak" experience!

Prior to this, I had already survived my first "near death experience", as told by my parents.
At around age one, barely a toddler, a tall stack of lumber fell on me in the Yuma lumber yard. I must have been climbing it when my Father's attention was elsewhere for a moment. I was a natural "climber" almost from birth, so I'm told.  I was blue from near suffocation when the whole yard crew and Dad finally dug me out. I had been crushed into the soft desert sand, which saved my life, with only a broken sternum. ( It never did knit back together, leaving me with "independent suspension" on each side of my rib cage.) The deeper "damage" was a persistent claustrophobia. Yet in the "positive balance" I developed an early appreciation for the "breath of life" and for freedom from "confining structures" both physical and mental. I felt, in sum, that I was well blessed to be still alive. I eventually learned that all "limits" are illusions of "belief."

Then, not long afterwards, they say I was stung by a scorpion as I playfully grabbed a little cone of sand during a lakeside picnic. It turned out to be a nonpoisonous variety, but they said I was in a "world of hurt" for quite awhile. So life was not very friendly "coming out of the starting gate". Little did I know that, on larger scale, the first atomic bomb test explosion took place about a month after my birth and not far from my birthplace, Ridgecrest, CA, near China Lake military base, where Dad was building test bombing targets as a young civilian carpenter. (My curiosity about "big bangs" must have begun unconsciously at a very early age.)

On balance, I had a very happy childhood in our new home and the surrounding natural wonders. My three brothers, two sisters and myself were well loved and cared for, which gave me  faith that love and good will was the majority of prevailing "reality." From this faith came confidence to explore "other realms" of Spirit and "magic", cosmology on larger scale than "life as we know it" ,and ultimately  transcendence of all time/space "scales."

I shared briefly (in the "Behold the Beauty" page) that I took my first out-of-body journey (to the "center of the cosmos") at age five under Dad's guidance, in deep hypnotic trance. This was his way of answering my question, "How big is God?" I would add here that "seeing" the whole cosmos imploding in on "me" felt very much like some earlier crushing near-death experience which I couldn't quite remember! My nightmares were primal screams from the direct experience of being nearly crushed to death but now  broadened and intensified to the scale of a little finite body crushed to oblivion by an "infinite" collapsing mass.   (See "Cosmic Wave" for a transcendental perspective on the "bang-crunch" cosmology.)
Dad had calmed me (several nights running) with assurance that God was a loving Creator and creation a friendly place (most of the time). I found this to be true, tho I had gone Way out of my depth into total terror on my first  out-of-body journey. Actually, the journey toward the "center" was, tho "cold", an awesome Journey through the expanding cosmos. In retrospect, the terror of the Great Implosion, from central perspective, was balanced by the "expansive feeling" of the Big Bang, experienced before my "journey inward" to its source point, the Center.

I revisited the cosmic vision many times over the years. The Vision first culminated in my gnostic awakening on 4/4/94. This was a three hour or more look at the pulsating cosmos and "our" little niche in it. (More below on my "return" from this one.) Then most recently over several days of dwelling in the Vision (with necessary breaks, of course) more detail clarified as the "Cosmic Wave" Vision and prophecy shared on this site.

There are many true stories of our family's early experiments with hypnosis and telepathy. As I said, I was Dad's best hypnotic subject, and we demonstrated frequently before a house full of friends and neighbors. But most of what I did in trance was hardly remembered, like vague and illusive dreams, because Dad would program me to forget it after awakening from trance. This was to protect me from the stress of remembering "the impossible" in "normal" consciousness, especially after my (perhaps) premature first plunge into the "deep end."  But my older brother would tell me about it in hushed tones of awe, and Dad would confirm the stories. They are really "incredible" so I will not tax the readers credibility by re-telling them here.

OK, one quick example: I was put in trance as a "transmitter" to Dad as "receiver". He would then go into receptive trance in another room, sitting with hands on a "device" for writing while in trance. I  was provided with a stack of ten images freshly torn out of various magazines. Mother was the "go between" putting each image on a table in front of me, one at a time, and signaling me to focus and "send". Then she would go to Dad's room and record the words or phrases describing each image as he spelled them out with an indicator on an alphabet board. We would often "hit" 10 out of 10 correctly. Even the occasional "miss" would be discussed, and we would discover that either Dad or I would have had a lapse of focus or a distracting thought that was either transmitted or generated in error on the receptive end.

I gave up being hypnotized at age twelve after refusing to "believe", even in deep trance, that a neighbor woman, mother of a good friend, was "my mother." In the demonstration, I was to acknowledge her as "Mom" in a familiar daily routine like, "Hi, Mom; I'm home", and a warm hug. But even deeper down than the trance, my soul knew that she was NOT my mother. Once my "total acceptance" of Dad's words as "reality" was shattered, I could never be hypnotized again. This was just as well. I had many journeys yet ahead on my own without Dad's will creating my reality! But I had learned a deep Mystery... that  BELIEF CREATES RELATIVE (CONSENSUS) REALITY..
The much later lesson was that  GNOSIS DAWNS AS ABSOLUTE REALITY, not dependent on "space-time reality" but co-creating it on "local scale" as "this life."

Gnosis did not "dawn" until '94, but until then, I went through several major  initiations and saw many Visions.  Most of these were not "formal" initiations, as I've always remained unaffiliated with religious (or any "organized") belief systems. But Life does the Initiations along the Spiritual Path when the "time is right" for each unique "life stream."

The only "apparent exception" (but not really) to this transcendence of organized belief systems was my ordination as a priest in the "Christic" Way like the early gnostics, before it became an "ism"; i.e.,  without joining a recognized hierarchy of "human authority."
 I was ordained through a "mystery school" in 1979 as a  priest of the "Eternal Order Melchizedek", without belonging to any church per se. This Order is the mystical / spiritual root of the whole Judeo/Christian Tradition, in which I was raised by "unaffiliated "(but "Christic") mystics.

My family and I had aspired to actually practice "Christ Consciousness" without swearing allegiance to any belief system. My parents always "took in" (for awhile, as needed) the "outcast" that my sibs and I occasionally brought home. Yet we all knew that the Church had it wrong where they taught that Jesus was the "Only Way to God." He had been misunderstood . He had actually said, "'I AM' IS the WAY. No one comes to the Creator but through 'I AM'." But egocentric perspective heard it as a personal statement rather than the transpersonal reality of Unity Consciousness. Likewise, when he said, " I and the Creator are One", He spoke in Unity, not as an individual person to be "worshipped!" So Christianity is founded, in error, on worshipping Jesus as the "Only Begotten Son of God."  Mystics of all traditions know, as in "Gnosis", that "Christ" means "anointed into God- Consciousness" (Allah Consciousness, etc.) and this is everyone's destiny who choose it, whether you call it  Divine Rapture/ Epiphany, Gnosis, Nirvana/ Samadhi, the Buddha Nature, One with the Tao, Enlightenment,  Liberation, Awakening,or whatever.

Anyway, soon after my ordination, a brother priest and I co-founded "The Fellowship of Holy Light" in Eugene. This was with the brother who had led me to the local "high priest" of the Melchizedek Order. Together we functioned as  "mystic Christic" priests for about two years. We then disbanded because there was still "ego" among us trying to "run the show." (If only mainstream churches would do likewise when personal or organizational power begins to take over!!)  None of us had fully transcended ego, tho we often "channeled Christ Consciousness" for  Holy Communion and Teaching Truth. (We had grown to three priests, two priest/apprentices and a small  but growing congregation...  about to outgrow our sanctuary space.)

Of the many Visions I received over the years, the greatest of these, before the "Cosmic Wave" and prophecy, came to me in 1980 after a week in solitude on Mt. Shasta. I was on a vision quest for clarification of the Great Pyramid Prophecy, which I had studied for many years. I will share this Vision another time.

It resulted in a clarification of the Cheops pyramid's  "Chronograph" at the "Great Step." This 30 inch high step which ends the Ascending Passage system and begins the  level approach to  the "Secret House of God" had become the "stone of stumbling" for all "chronograph decoding" since the 1860's. The famous "inch-year scale" in the Ascending Passages had "failed the test" of prophecy after the final "confirmed" date of 1914 (beginning W.W.I.) This was the "inch-year" corresponding to the far end of the Great Step. From this Vision, the chronograph beyond the Step became clear and gave late 2013 as the completion of the period called "Passing Through the Door of the Secret House of God." I have shared this detail for those who might have wondered where the Pyramid Prophecy of 2013 came from. It was given as one of three Prophetic Witnesses in the "Cosmic Wave" and prophecy page on this site (www.consciousunity.org.)

I may share other "medicine stories" of the power of Spiritual Guidance later on this web site, but I will close for now with a "close-up" of "my Awakening" as the title promises.
The context is this: Just as my hypnotic "feats of power and magic" as a deep-trance subject were as vague dreams after waking into "normal consciousness", so my "normal" waking consciousness became as a dream from which I awoke in April of '94. The "dream" was that "I" was actually "someone", a "self",... a personal identity (entity) separate from the Greater Whole. The Wake Up Call was the  complete dis-integration (temporarily) of the whole set of complex programs defining who "I" was, and all "operating procedures" for what I was doing with my life "exploded" as well.

The "Great Rebirth" came at the end of the three or four hour meditation mentioned above.  For those interested in "time" and timing, I don't track "clock time" as well as natural cycles, but I started sitting about halfway into incoming tide, and it reached me at high tide. I had been on the Islands nearly two months, guided by Signs and Visions. (The whole story is written up --not on this site-- under the title, "The Liberation of White Coyote ...A Shamanic Journey Through Hawaii". It was "self"- published, and no copies are presently available.) I was on 'Sabbatical' from "business as usual" (as a masonry contractor), and I had just entered the phase of life called divorced, post parenthood . (Our youngest, age 12, was living with his mother, and I was "free to roam" for the first time since "raising" our three sons together. As a working mason, I had also saved enough "coin of the realm" to take a long break and travel.)

So, on my "final approach" to Awakening, on the North Shore of Kauai at Hanalei Bay, I saw the most detailed Vision yet of the Living, Breathing "Kosmos" and this person's place in It. Then I finally witnessed the disappearance of all personal programming. It actually appeared to "blow up" like one of the black holes birthing a new star, which I had grown so fond of "observing" over the years in the Great Cosmic Imagination.

"Reality" was fused into a multi-dimensional experience of "Kosmos" and the "local elements" at play in and through this person with "nobody home" doing it! I felt my sun baked body yearning for the cool surf, which had come in to swirl around me. I rolled out further into the surf and then swam beyond the crashing waves to float peacefully on my back. I was One with sea and sky and earth... and Kosmos.
"Time" disappeared and the eternal "NOW" took its place. "To this day" and always there is only NOW... perpetually... eternally!  Of course, when we focus attention on "event duration", we call it "time", and that is all there is to it!

Whether or not this body actually floated far out to sea, as it seemed in my ecstatic union with All,...  I felt that in one sense it didn't matter at all, from cosmic perspective, whether the body drowned or not. Yet, just like each blade of grass, this life was infinitely precious in its own unique Way,... in its potential to love and serve those whose lives "mine" might yet touch. When I felt simultaneously totally detached from survival as/in this body AND inspired to Be this Infinite Consciousness living this life... then "I" was

If this true story helps anyone to see more clearly what  the Spiritual Path of Preparation and the Gnostic Awakening might mean for her or him, then it has served its purpose. But each must "write" and live one's own story and eventually wake up from "ego's dream" in his/her own Way.