I was not at all happy with the way my life was going. My musical career was going nowhere. I had, out of necessity, just moved back from Texas to my hometown in northwestern Missouri. To recover from a financial debt incurred in those previous, much leaner years, I had taken work in my family’s construction business.

Having discovered Unity Village, I regarded the highlight of my week to be attending the Sunday services, which were, at that time, under the leadership of Sig and Jane Paulson. The services were so rewarding that I didn’t mind making the 120-mile round trip through sun, rain, sleet, or snow two, and sometimes three, times a week. The uplift I received in that environment was wonderful, and it gave me something to look forward to in what I otherwise perceived as a rather bland existence. I remember thinking, as do many people, that if I could just live at Unity Village all the time, I could permanently lose my sad self.

One day, as I was drifting along trying to figure out a direction for my life, a very important question occurred to me. Why was it that I could experience such an elevated state of mind at Unity Village but seemed unable to have the same type of experience at home? If this elevated state was coming from within me, as I was told it was, why couldn’t I tap into it wherever I was and whatever I was doing?

Pondering this question inspired me to begin arriving early at my work site so I could meditate. I would practice releasing all the negative energy I was putting into my job. I would practice letting go of all the limited preconceptions I was placing on myself while I was on the job. I stopped telling myself I could not be happy in that particular situation. In short, I did a major housecleaning on myself concerning my perception of that experience.

The results were wonderful. Slowly I began to think of that job in an entirely different way. I began to see that nothing but my own restrictive attitude was keeping me from coming fully alive in that situation. I began to have insights and experiences that made me realize that my ability to live life to its fullest was never absent. I was simply sealing it off from my conscious mind by making my desired state of being show a dependency on the presence of certain types of circumstances. This was a case in which I began to bloom where I was planted.


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