Wandering Through the Spiritual Wilderness: My Sixty-Year Journey to Spirit

By Robert Freck

Looking for a way to merge all your religious and spiritual experiences into a meaningful whole that can impact your life. Read my 60 year journey from athiest to agnositc to deeply religious person to a mix of a variety of creeds, beliefs and activities. The book explores the upsides and problems with a variety of spiritual paths. Perhaps you will find some wisdom in this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781663222985

Robert Freck

Robert Freck is an ordained Interfaith Minister, and a church speaker and group leader of Science and Spirituality weekly session. He was a Licensed Unity Teacher, and a semiconductor Engineer.

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Copyright © 2021 Robert Freck.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-2299-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-2298-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021909983

iUniverse rev. date: 05/20/2021

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1    The Early Years

Chapter 2    The Unity Years

Chapter 3    My New New Age Experience

Chapter 4    My Christian Experience

Chapter 5    My Sufi and Islamic Experience

Chapter 6    My Mormon Experience

Chapter 7    My Buddhist Experience

Chapter 8    My Hindu and Wiccan Experiences

Chapter 9    Judaism

Chapter 10    Native American and Indigenous Traditions and All the Others

Chapter 11    Science and Spirituality

Chapter 12    Music in the Spiritual Experience

Chapter 13    My Seminary Experience

Chapter 14    A Course in Miracles

Chapter 15    The Grief Process

Chapter 16    People I Have Known

Chapter 17    My DC Wilderness Experience

Chapter 18    Parliament of World Religions

Chapter 19    My Talk on Faith and Belief and Other Works of Mine

Chapter 20    Interview Responses

Chapter 21    Bread for the Journey—Spiritual Practices, Books, and Songs That    Nourish the Soul

Chapter 22    Lessons from the Journey

INTRODUCTION

I was a three-year-old living in the Midwest when my world fell apart. It was 1954. My mom died of a kidney disease that could have been cured today with an antibiotic. My dad then left for parts unknown; I didn’t see or hear from him again for almost five years.

A few months later, my aunts, whom I was close to, were murdered in a case that remains unsolved. I don’t know what level of emotion or feelings a three-year-old can have … I mostly remember feeling abandoned, afraid, and numb. But there was something else in the background then. I remember knowing that somehow, my mom and aunts were still with me. I had no religious training and did not have a name for it. Today, I would say faith got me through the experience.

It took me many years to understand and reconcile my experiences. I blamed God for a long time; that kept me away from churches for over thirty years. Today, I don’t claim to have any answers, just better questions.

This book probes the difference between belief and faith and how they are intertwined yet different. It is about my personal spiritual journey over the last sixty years—the ups and downs, the changes, the epiphanies, and the disillusionments. Any correlation to your personal journey is coincidental, but perhaps you can draw some inspiration, hope, grace, and faith from my journey. My journey is somewhat from the perspective of a religious gypsy, a wanderer looking for his way home. Most important, perhaps you can draw some questions and insights from my experience.

I have been in a New Thought movement called Unity for thirty years: having attended 105 Unity churches and having had a variety of experiences positive and negative or learning as they say in New Thought. So this book has somewhat of a Unity tilt, but that is probably true of many experiences. The book makes no attempt to be neutral.

I attempt to take an honest look at spiritual experiences—what attracts people to them, how they have changed over the years, and how they can be improved. I have interviewed people of a variety of faiths and practices in an attempt to learn what they have learned from their experiences.

Many churches and spiritual practices have closed or downsized, and many others have experienced a decline in attendance and funding. Is this a nationwide trend? Are all religions experiencing decline? According to the data, there are two sectors that are experiencing rapid growth—Evangelical Christians and Mormons. What are they doing to expand their messages? And do Unity and other churches really want to expand their messages? These are the tough-love questions posed in the last section of this book.

According to Tom Punch, chief creative and commercial officer for the youth-centric media company Virtue, We now think religious brands should think more broadly about what their role is in society and how they can truly be a force for good in people’s lives. (Virtue media, 1999)

This book is a compilation of my experiences, my musings in seminary, and in some cases my biased opinions … Take them for what they are worth to develop your own. It is what I have learned and what I have experienced I hope with an agreeable mix of both.

At the end of several chapters are discussion questions. Please take the time to consider, answer, and discuss them with others.

—Robert Freck

CHAPTER 1

THE EARLY YEARS

M y early years were rather uneventful and harmless. My parents and stepparents were what I suppose today we would call agnostics, though they insisted we kids attend Sunday school. We went to services twice a year—Christmas and Easter—and endured the Latin Catholic masses and the Jesus sinner talks. I consider this a blessing after listening to others’ traumatic religious experiences with traditional religions and particularly those of women and people of color. I never really got any insight or awareness out of this other than a growing sense of separation and alienation from religion.

As an adult, I was not religious or spiritual. Life was about work, being married, raising a child, doing the right thing for my family, and so on. I never stepped into a church between ages sixteen and forty and never regretted that. While in drug rehab at age forty-one, I was allowed to attend a Catholic service. I sat there and was told I was not allowed to take communion because I was not a practicing Catholic. I thought, What kind of God would do that? not understanding the practice or the ritual. I remained antireligious for a short while after that.

Then I started having experiences. I was introduced to a Chinese fortune-teller in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, who told me I would divorce my wife but not wind up with my girlfriend and would radically change careers. All of these things came to fruition over the midterm and got me to wondering.

I would also observe rituals in Malaysia including walking on hot coals and eating fire. I had a mentor who guided me through these experiences. I also broke or sprained my ankle during a Hash House run, which we would do every Saturday in Kuala Lumpur. We would run through the jungle with rain, snakes, leeches, and all kind of other obstacles and follow a paper trail laid in advance by Hash leaders. There would be false trails (What are the false trails we follow in life?) to lead the fastest runners astray and equalize the runners into common finishing times. At the end, people would burn the leeches off their legs, put them into their beer, which would turn them a bright red, and then drink it. Apparently, a virulence thing.

About my ankle … One day While running the Hash, I slipped into a sinkhole and heard my ankle snap. It was incredibly painful, and I couldn’t walk. My friend helped me up, and I asked to be taken to a hospital. He said, Would you be willing to try something else? I said yes, and we went down a dirt road to a remote village perhaps twenty miles away. The people there lived in primitive huts with no electricity or running water. We entered one hut, and I was introduced to a ninety-year-old blind man who was called the village Bomoh, or witchdoctor. I later learned that my friend had used him at his plant when so-called spirits had inhabited it and the workers had freaked out and refused to work. He spoke no English, but my friend explained my problem. He asked me to lie on a table, and he started rubbing my leg, chanting, and rubbing Tiger Balm on my ankle. It was painful to the touch, and I limped back to the car. I went back to the hotel and woke up the next morning, with absolutely no pain in my ankle. I actually went for a run. Got me thinking …

CHAPTER 2

THE UNITY YEARS

I was in Changi Airport in Singapore awaiting a twenty-six-hour flight back to Melbourne, Florida, having completed a four-week assignment for my company in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. I wanted something to read on the long flight home, so I found a bookstore and looked for something interesting.

I was attracted to a book for no apparent reason. Having had no religious or spiritual background for much of my life, I had no idea why I needed to read it. But I bought it and read it on the flight home. It changed my life. The book was Marianne Williamson’s Return to Love (Harper Collins, 1996), and it ignited a spiritual fire in me that had smoldered in me for a long time.

????

I returned to Florida intrigued but not really understanding the ideas I had read in the book. I have asked myself many times over the last thirty years what had made me grab that book. Was it God’s will, intuition, some innate spiritual sense, or something else? I continue to ponder these questions to this day.

I wanted to learn more about this Course in Miracles expereience; an spiritual, non religious experience channeled by a Lait prerson: people seemed very moved by it. Fear is the absence of love? Nothing we see is real? Some ideas were so foreign to my life and experiences that I wanted to learn more. So I looked up Course in Miracles classes in Florida and found one at a Unity chirch just down the road.

I showed up for a class on a Wednesday. The teacher was a Unity minister, and the instruction was around Easter. The first spiritual lesson I ever learned was, If you’re going to be crucified, you might as well hang around for the resurrection. For me, many crucifications and resurections followed that.

The Early Years

Before we proceed with this, let’s look back at my previous religious life. I was around forty when my Course in Miracles experience began. I had grown up in a very typical post–World War II home in a typical suburb. My mom had been a devout Catholic. I mentioned that my siblings and I were required to go to a Presbytarian Sunday school though my dad and stepmom never went and that we went to services twice a year—Christmas and Easter.

After my mom died, my father took off to places unknown and I lived with an aunt. My dad came back when I was eight complete with an inherited family. My fractured family included a stepmom, two kids from her first marriage, and three boys, twins two of them, from their marriage. It was a very normal childhood with some notable exceptions; I found out years later that my dad had abused members of my family—one of those deep, dark, family secrets.

A spiritual moment if you wish to call it happened to me when I was eight; I was walking down the sidewalk, and a bird kept hovering above me. It seemed like it was saying, I’m your mom. Everything’s okay! I had neither the context nor the presence to understand this message, but today, I think I understand it.

So many secrets in my family as I am sure exist in many families … My father had been adopted as a child, which I found out by accident many years later, but then I recently learned that even this might not be true. Abuse and the affairs my father had with a neighborhood woman were common. So much for healing to come up for later years. I buried much of this grief until much later, when I learned how to deal with it.

Later, as a thirty-something living in the Southwest, I heard a voice. It wasn’t audible, but it was a strong feeling in my mind. It said simply, Call your dad. My father and I had been estranged for eight years at that time, and as it turned out, he lived just eight miles from me. The estrangement was due to his abuse of other members of the family, not me, but I hadn’t learned about forgiveness yet. So mostly to make the voice go away, I called him, and we arranged to meet.

It was a pleasant visit but with no new revelations or deep discussions. I didn’t know how to do those things either. But six weeks later, my father had a stroke and died. I needed to ask where that voice had come from and what had caused me to call him. I said at his funeral that he taught me to be resilient.

He was imperfect, but he demanded