Finding The Ascended Masters and Church Universal and Triumphant
Camelot, Calabasas, California
What type of personality is attracted to a cult or sect? There is no one personality, although there are some common traits that can influence one to join. Looking back in retrospect I cannot find those traits that I had. The only thing I see is that I was more of an introvert rather than an extrovert. I don't need a lot of people around me and I like my quiet time. I generally don't talk too much and I don't look to people to help me or answer my needs, although I willingly accept help when I do need it.
Yet one trait that I might have is labeled as either a perfectionist or idealist. My perfectionism doesn't apply to dress or housekeeping, to the people around me, but in my youth more in wanting to appear perfect as a person. I came to the conclusion in later years that it stemmed from feeling unloved by my parents and that the cause was me. I somehow wasn't perfect enough for them to love. This was not a conscious thought, just something that was there unconsciously and I eventually saw it was not real. I am an idealist in a small way, wanting a better world, while at the same time I realize the only way for that to happen is if God takes command. But God has given us command over the world and ourselves and He will only interfere if we pray and ask for help. Eventually, God will draw an end to our world and we will have lost our chance to make a better world, but until then we are responsible for changing ourselves and doing all we can to help others. This is where religion comes in for me, how to better help others and ourselves, and thus the world.
Consequently, I did not join a new religion seeking to be part of a group, to have friends, to be liked or seem pure, I joined because I was looking for spiritual fulfillment. Many people who leave their churches or synagogues do so because they have a strong faith but aren't being adequately served through their religion. If they are like me, having a strong faith but no outlet to express itself, it brings about the longing for finding a place of like interests. I share here some of my personality and experiences that brought me to the Summit Lighthouse, and part of my early experiences with them.
My story with the church begins after Mark Prophet had died and Elizabeth Clare Prophet had remarried and was separated from her new husband, Randal King. At the time I joined I had no contact with the newspapers and their stories on the church. So I will begin with my experience of knowing nothing about the ascended masters, Elizabeth, or Church Universal and Triumphant.
Exploring the Unknown in the World
When I look back over my youth I see my interests and explorations of the world that I had that were outside of the norm. I have no particular reason that I had these interests. Nothing in my family or with my friends led me to study the occult or join in with anyone in these type of activities. All of my studies were on my own and in private, and I never felt the need to talk with anyone about my explorations. At the time I thought nothing of my research. They were just a part of who I was. But where did the desire to know about these things come from?
My family raised me in a reserved environment. My parent's descendants were English and they both had quiet, reserved and undemonstrative temperaments. I believe that in part this upbringing left me feeling alone a lot, even though I had siblings. We didn't discuss things together, and today I still can't have a deep conversation with my mother or bring up certain topics, they just are an unspoken taboo. So I never thought to share my interests even with my older sister who was very close to my age. Possibly because my parents did not discuss anything of depth with their children, and my sister had no interest in what I studied, I kept these things to myself.
I belonged to an Episcopal church and enjoyed my youth attending church on Sundays and all the holy parts of my religion, especially communion. I sang in the choir, was an altar "girl", taught Sunday school and went to all the youth activities. I was not needing another church and was quite happy with my relationship with God. I do not remember God talking back to me, but I did talk to God about the deep things in life that I could not share with my family starting at a young age. If one believed in reincarnation then some of my conversations would make sense, for I would talk to God about my future as if I had experienced things in the past and did not want a repeat of them.
A few of my conversations I remember that stand out. One was a strange conversation about being cold. I was born on Long Island, and my family left for South Florida when I was five. South Florida stays warm all year and a few times a year the temperature may get into the sixties, the rest of the year it is very hot. Yet I had this fear of freezing to death. My body type was of a very slight frame bordering on being too thin after we moved to Florida. Being around boats and living close to the ocean meant that we had cool ocean breezes to temper the heat, but sometimes I would get chilled from being wet or swimming in a pool, and especially being out on the water in the evening hours. If something happened in my infant or toddler years I have no memory, it made more sense that something happened before I was born, meaning I had more than one lifetime.
I feared freezing to death, which is a strange fear since we lived in such a warm climate. So I told God one day that if I had to die from either freezing to death or burning to death that I would choose burning to death. A few times in my youth I read or saw movies involving being lost in the snow or having to traverse snow covered mountains and at those times I felt very uncomfortable and empathized with the people in the stories. Another conversation I remember was again about my future. I was young so I knew very little about wars, but I might have watched a television show that triggered something in me. The Civil War has always been painful for me to read about or watch any enactments of it. Whatever triggered the conversation I asked God to please not give me sons in this life as I did not want to have boys that would have to go to war and get killed.
People who do believe in reincarnation also understand that what we fear often returns to us in subsequent lifetimes so we can resolve our psychology. Thus it appeared that somehow I knew I would have sons. I was blessed with three sons, one right after the other, before I had any daughters. Another fear I had I always believed stemmed from a past life. From an infant I had fear of the sea and my mother told me that I used to start crying as soon as we would go on the dock to get on our boat. As I grew up I had a deathly fear of storms with lightning, but encountering a storm on the sea was the worst.
My father had a forty foot sailboat and she was very seaworthy. He also was a very good sailor and loved the sea and had no fear of the ocean. While we were on a sailing vacation when I was about ten one day he decided to avoid the afternoon storms that would roll in from the Gulf of Mexico and this time he would head out and go around the storm as to avoid spending the afternoons anchored or at a dock. We ended up in the middle of the storm far out in the Gulf when the storm came upon us. I was terrified.
Then at some point we lost our rudder and then I lost it. The waves were high and watching the boat being tossed and turned by rogue large waves while having no way to steer the boat in my mind was surely the end of our lives ending with the boat capsizing. We were also taking on water as the bilge pump could not pump out the water as fast as we were taking it on. So my father sent my sister below to bail the water out. For the one and only time in my life I got hysterical and my father sent me below deck to lay in my bunk. It was then I tried to make a deal with God. I asked God if he would save us from drowning I would be good the rest of my life! Of course I received no answer back or had any idea God would accept my plea and terms, but I tried out of desperation. My father put out a rope and pail on our stern as a drag to keep us in a certain direction and then he devised some sort of pin to replace the one that had broken on the rudder, all while we were being tossed and turned. I have never been so terrified as I was that day. Consequently, my mother never wanted to go on any more vacations on the boat, she did not know how to swim. We all had life jackets on and she tied us all together with a rope until we had to separate to go below. I still went out sailing after that, but I always grew tense when I spotted a storm cloud on the horizon.
Then when I was about fifteen I found a book on my father's chest of drawers. It was an Edgar Cayce book by Jess Stearn called "The Sleeping Prophet". It was the year the book came out and maybe someone had given the book to my father as it was not his type of reading. My father was not religious, he did not believe in reincarnation, at least he never spoke to us that he did. He rarely read books, mostly the newspaper and his magazines about boats and boating. He was a boat builder and boats was his world. He was not interested in natural healing either. There were six printings of the book one year later so it must have been a popular book.
The book went on to affirm my belief in reincarnation, while Cayce's readings for people in his self-induced trance provided unusual methods of healing for people. With my interest in natural healing I could not put the book down. Case after case he would diagnose the cause of people's illness with only their name and location, and then give them directions on what to do to heal themselves. Cayce's readings introduced such esoteric terms as "higher self", "channeling" and "Akashic Records".
Sometimes in retrospect, we cannot understand why we do certain things, at least I have had that experience many times. Why did I go in my parent's room, and why did I pick up that book? I never asked my father to borrow that book, I just took it. I cannot remember how I could just take someone's book without asking. And what would have attracted me to that book except my interest in healing and possibly some reference to reincarnation on the cover? As if some unseen force was guiding me to find that book and read it, with the unusual circumstance of how it got into my father's hands, it was to set me on a course that led me to the ascended masters. Thus that book was a definitive change in my life. Here was someone who had a strong Christian faith where reincarnation was not taught and somehow he had to accept that through him miracles were happening and that reincarnation was real according to whatever came through him.
No one really knows who or how Edgar Cayce channeled this "higher self or consciousness" but this voice identified itself as Cayce's higher consciousness and knew everything about everyone, down to the cellular level of their bodies. No one ever claimed it was God, but that the information according to Cayce's higher self came from the Akashic Records or God's "Book of Life" where all knowledge is stored of every thought, word or deed of every living being since the beginning of the dawn of creation.
I had many interests in things labeled as "new age" in the following years. I had an interest in astrology as a tool to understand myself better. I started buying books on the subject and even studied with an astrologer to be able to read charts. I also grew fascinated with ufology and read everything I could find on the phenomenon. I read "Chariots of the Gods" by Erich Von Daniken, and "Worlds in Collision" by Immanuel Velikovsky. I continued to read and collect stories on Edgar Cayce and his healing methods, as well as read his answers on such topics as Atlantis, the great pyramid and other esoteric subjects. I was captivated with Jess Stearn's book about Taylor Caldwell called, The Search for a Soul: Taylor Caldwell's Psychic Lives. She too rebelled against the idea of reincarnation but in her regressions these different lives of hers get appearing. I went on to read several other of Taylor Caldwell's books, "Romance of Atlantis", and "Dear and Glorious Physician. a novel about Saint Luke. He was portrayed as one of the greatest physicians of the ancient world traveling far and wide healing the sick, which I found fascinating having an interest myself in healing. Her ability to write on subjects we knew little about was remarkable. The master "El Morya" said through Elizabeth Clare Prophet that her talent came from her ability to access the Akashic records.
I studied on my own homeopathy, iridology, Bach Remedies and using cell salts and took study courses on how to use them. I had a subscription to Prevention magazine, which featured articles on alternative medicine, diet and my favorite part, a story each month on how a naturopath would uncover the true cause of his patient's illnesses. I also read books on Atlantis, Nostradamus and the Bermuda Triangle. And then I did ordinary things like gardening trying to grow vegetables in the poor sandy soil of Florida and the Bahamas, but eventually I could grow vegetables wherever I could find a patch of land as I had this strong desire desired to grow and eat my own organic vegetables. I loved to cook starting at ten years old, and later taught myself from a twelve volume cookbook set I bought when I was a teen.
Why did I have an interest in all these mysterious theories, the ancient world, as well as this drive to study natural healing and grow my own food? It was there and as much a part of me as eating and sleeping was. Something was driving me that seemed to be above and beyond me, something that fit in line with Edgar Cayce's teaching on having a "Higher Self". I did not fit in with the normal teenage fads, dancing and partying. I did not like alcohol, coffee, sodas or anything that could become addictive. Not that I knew what addiction was at first, I simply had no desire for alcohol or very sweet things and I never even tasted coffee or needed caffeine to function in the morning. I had no interest in the Beatles, although it was the main rage for awhile, and could never see why others went crazy over them. Was their music that good? I was revolted by acid or heavy rock music and the idea of taking drugs was outside my concept in keeping a sound mind and body. When I was eighteen I found an abandoned box of record albums that was all classical music and those records introduced me to classical music for the first time and I never lost interest since.
As I worked towards a career I decided to become a secretary and took courses in my senior year to be one. I knew I would marry young and having four children, which I did through my fist marriage, but exceeded that goal to eventually have six. I was a receptionist and bookkeeper at my first job after graduating, but suddenly I decided I needed to go to college and left my job after a year. I chose not to go to my local community college but one fifty miles away, where I met my future husband a month after starting school. I decided I would join a club and become more social, something I was not accustomed to doing, outside of joining a gardening club in my youth, and it was there I met my husband. I returned to school to become a psychologist so I could work with autistic children, which I felt a deep desire within to help them, but I was quickly disappointed in my studies and not agreeing with Freud or the subjects I had to take.
My husband and I got married a year later, I was almost nineteen. We immediately took jobs working on a Navy base in the Bahamas, so I had to quit school. I got a job as a personnel director's secretary and was one of the few girls that worked on the base, most were men working on boats and together there were only fifty civilians. Thus I fulfilled all my goals, getting married, having four children and being a secretary fairly quickly. When I was twenty-four the urge came over me to have a child and within a month I was pregnant. All the rest of our children were unplanned.
There was something driving my life beyond my outer awareness, because I never had a questions about what I should do or not do, I just knew certain steps in my early life I needed to take. When I joined the Summit Lighthouse and the ascended master teachings I seemed to lose that knowing that had been with me prior. I was twenty-eight when I found the Teachings and I put aside my inner sense of knowing and followed the Guru and the "masters" out of respect for their higher authority and supposedly closer access to the God source.
My husband had severe asthma as a child but I did not accept that he was permanently ill. I had not grown up with illness in my family outside of us having the common cold and occasional flu and a bout of pneumonia I got. So I went into the marriage believing I could help my husband be healthy and not succumb to asthma attacks. About five years into the marriage I had to take him to the hospital one night as his medication wasn't able to help him breath. His family moved to Florida for his health, which had helped him, and a few years after we married we bought land in West Virginia and after our first son was born we tried to live there. The climate was hard on his lungs and thus he succumbed to the severe attack. So we moved back to Florida and had to sell the land.
The first time I heard a clear message from somewhere inside me, but not me, was a month after we were married. The voice said to me, "Do you love this man?" Although I remember the moment as if it happened yesterday, I cannot fathom why I thought nothing strange about hearing such a message. I must have responded somewhere inside my mind and heart to say to myself, "Yes, of course I love this man." Yet that set the course to be able to make many changes during our ten years together, where I was strengthened to do what was right, and always in the back of my mind I had the thought of what was my love for this man. Was it really love or a "falling in love"? At first I did everything my husband wanted, thinking I was to put my needs aside and please my husband in fulfilling his needs. But over time I started asserting my needs, the important ones that defined my character that I had put aside to please him.
The second time I heard a message was five years into our marriage. The message told me that my husband did not want to be healed, because he used his illness to control people. In other words, he would get his way and avoid doing things using his illness as an excuse. I knew instantly that that was true. I had become more of the masculine side during our marriage doing physical chores that men usually do because I have this "can do" attitude. We even switched roles after my son was born with me working full time while my husband stayed home and watched our first child, as my job paid more than what he was making. Understanding that he really did not want to let go of his illness, as it served him all his life, I let go of any desire or belief that I could help him.
I also discovered after we were married that my husband was agnostic. We had gotten married in my church and God and religion just never came up in our conversations. God has always been very integral in my life, and thus God would come between us because I put God first. In truth, we were separating over the years because as I grew more into who I really was, I was less of my husband's ideal wife. If I did not do what he wanted, he grew steadily more angry with me. I did not know at the time why he was angry, or even realizing I was changing, but the big change came when I joined the Summit Lighthouse. I stopped drinking any alcohol, abstained from certain immoral acts, gave up most sweets, and spent a lot of time at church services. I tried to interest him in joining with me, but after attending one service with me he never tried again.
One day he said to me, "You love God more than you love me." I was stunned, not ever imagining that anyone could be in competition with God. Yet from his viewpoint of not really believing in God, from his perspective my belief of a God was in competition with his agnostic belief and the way he wanted our marriage to be—which was whatever he wanted. God was standing between us because God had laws that I put above what my husband wanted, and even unwritten laws that come with common sense in knowing when you are straying from something good into something bad. I will never forget the freedom I felt after we were divorced. I had not realized until after we were permanently separated how much I had been controlled. If I went to the store I would worry that I was gone too long and he would be upset with me. There seemed to be dozens of those type of feelings that I always had to watch what I did that I was not doing what he wanted me to do. In other words, he was controlling me and I had found a relationship where I was working on healing my own psychology from what I believed was a very controlling mother throughout my youth. Of course I could never say no to my mother and likewise I could not say no to my husband, as both represented authority figures to me, with the man being the head of the household—and my mother certainly was.
I do not blame the Summit Lighthouse and their teachings for breaking up our marriage. I had changed my behavior when I met my husband and in joining the church I was strengthened to standing up for my rights. I did not believe in having sex outside of marriage, but my husband did. Within two weeks of meeting him I knew I was in love with him. But was I really in love? The prophetic words given to me, "Do you really love this man?" had a meaning I would come to understand in time. I was in love with being loved. I literally "fell" in love, something that psychologists describe as falling for someone because your soul/psyche desires to heal some inner issues. Coming from a family where no words of love were ever expressed, or where hugs and kisses were unheard of, or where rarely a word of gratitude was heard for what one did, or words of praise, I had been love-starved. And finding someone who appeared to love me was euphoric. I feared that if I did not give him what he wanted, starting with sex outside of marriage, he would leave me and I would lose this glorious feeling of being loved. This fear was not a conscious fear, but an unconscious one. It was my Achilles heel.
When I re-found myself and a relationship with God once again, I no longer worried about pleasing my husband. I had stopped going to church after we were married. I knew around that same time that I had to leave my church and find another church that spiritually fit my beliefs. I tried several different churches but they did not seem right. At the same time I had this desire to keep searching and so I decided to first read the Bible from cover to cover, but I did not succeed. The Old Testament was hard for me to get through. Eventually I was drawn back to searching the unusual, the unexplained phenomenons, and that is how I found the Ascended Master teachings and the Summit Lighthouse.
Finding Saint Germain
When we finally returned to civilization (America) after living in the Bahamas for four years and having no television, I started watching the weekly series "In Search of..." on unsolved mysteries. One day they aired a show about the Count St. Germain, and how it was believed that he never died and had lived for hundreds of years. Although that was interesting, what caught my attention was this church that believed he was an ascended master. Although the "hail St. Germain" part that this church was reciting felt off, I was very drawn to find this church and this Saint Germain, yet I did not know how as I had not paid attention to the church's name or their leader, and this being the 1970's there was no worldwide Internet.
As it turned out I did not have to search long or find the church myself, for the church came practically right to my doorstep when a new neighbor moved in across the street. My husband decided to go over and introduce himself as they were moving in and offer his services, so I tagged along. The next day I went over again and the woman was playing a cassette tape of a recording of Elizabeth Clare Prophet giving a dictation from St. Germain! I asked her what was that that she was playing and realized this was the same church I had heard on In Search of... She and her husband were members of the church and they set up their home to have church services. Thus they were my introduction into the church and the type of people who join.
Again, was something guiding my life that wanted me to join this church? People have said that when they saw a picture of Elizabeth on posters advertising a conference, they were very drawn to her. What would prompt us to see someone and be instantly drawn, as I was with my first husband or Saint Germain, or others with Elizabeth, or read a certain book that was life changing or be at a certain place at a certain time that someone's life was saved or a miracle happened? Was it God or some dark force that wanted to guide us to sin by following the wrong path? Yet that is not the way I looked at what happened. I felt I positively changed in finding my inner strength once again and the Godly person I was before I met my husband came-to-fore. I did not blame my husband for anything I did, I saw it as a character flaw in myself, but not what the flaw was until decades later. The church I saw as a godsend and I held that belief for twenty years, until Elizabeth Clare Prophet had to retire due to her Alzheimer disease. Although I left the church and what I saw as a complete takeover by fallen angels, I held the belief that the ascended masters and their teachings were real for another sixteen years.
How could I, or others who joined and eventually left the teachings, change our belief, especially after many years of devotion to the masters and their guru? Most of the students who left and took the time to write their stories were staff members. Although I was on staff for a year, I was not permanent staff and did not live in the headquarters. I was married and continued to live apart from the church and did not experience what others did who had to obey the Guru and give over their life to her and the church. The first day I started on staff I was given a rule book that was two inches thick of memos and rules to read and then obey. It was shocking to my senses, and that was my first personal contact with what the staff members had to experience.
The teachings of the Summit Lighthouse were complex and did contain all manner of rules, depending on what level of commitment you were involved with. I ran a study group out of my home in Florida for four years before I moved closer to their headquarters. Although we had rules, I was not strict on obeying all of them. We used our common sense and regulated ourselves from that place. For example, you were instructed not to read any other books besides the books published by the Summit Lighthouse. To me that was unthinkable, and thus I believed that that advice or direction was not given for me but for others. It simply made no sense, but for some who needed that advice it must have been given for. But that is also dangerous ground and a way to even put aside one of the Ten Commandments because God didn't give you personally that law, and you know how to use your own common sense. If you pick and choose what laws you are going to obey, whether secular or religious you can quickly get into trouble.
We were told you should attend four or five services a week. You were asked to tithe 10% of your income, and were committed to do so if you became an inner church member by becoming a communicate. There was a list of hundreds of questions you were asked when joining as a communicate, and if you answered any of them in the affirmative in that you had participated in any of the "sinful" activities enumerated in those questions, you would be given a lecture on why you had to give up that sinful practice to become a communicate of the church. Staff members had it much harder. Their diet, sex life and work schedule was all controlled by the Messenger and her direction from the "masters". While she controlled who they could date or not date, marry or take off time to attend funerals or weddings, they were also weighed down with the fear of making a mistake and being severely reprimanded. I will write more of these subjects in a future article.
Reading and Studying Summit Materials
Most church members were Keepers of the Flame, a non denominational fraternity, and an outer commitment to the Great White Brotherhood and Saint Germain, but they could still be a member of another church, although few were. Once becoming a Keeper you would receive monthly lessons. If you ever left the church you were obligated to give back those lessons. Oddly enough, I never read but a few of them, although I received all 33 of them. I never read most of their books as well, or the weekly pearls of wisdom we would receive. What I did do was listen to hundreds of lectures and dictations and give countless hours of decrees. I held four church services a week from my home over the four years that I had a study group, as well as have one night where we would study a Summit Lighthouse book, which left little time for reading.
When I first joined the church I read The Chela and the Path, a collection of pearls of wisdom by El Morya. I found the book insightful. When I first tried reading the pearls of wisdom, usually published dictations from the masters, I found them difficult to read because they made little sense to me. Consequently, I did not develop the habit to read the pearls until I left the Summit Lighthouse and then I used them to teach the ascended master teachings to others. By then I could understand the pearls as I had adapted to all the strange "ascended master language" they used and understood what they meant. I went to as many conferences as I could afford to go to, where I would hear live dictations from the masters, and later hear them again on a tape recording, so I did not need to read the pearls of wisdom when they eventually were printed. When I moved closer to their headquarters I would attend all the services where dictations were given, and again, I found that I rarely read the later printed pearl of them.
I believe I made wise use of my time in giving service to the church and the masters rather than reading their materials, as I worked full time and had children to raise and care for. The four years I ran my study group was after I was divorced. I had created a job for myself in South Florida where many retirees move to. They needed help in cleaning their homes, shopping, and taking them to medical appointments. Consequently, I was free to listen to church recordings while I worked during those four years and I became steeped in the master's teachings.
Moving to South Florida
I first heard of the church in 1979 while living in central Florida. My new neighbors who belonged to the church moved in around Christmas, so I joined the church around that time, but the staff lost my paperwork and I did not officially become a Keeper until the following year, after I resent the paperwork. Meanwhile I had been attending services at the couples house on a weekly basis, but that did not last long as after my third son was born and I wanted for us to move closer to my family so I could have help with three small boys under four years old. I was working part time as well as raising a family while my husband was attending college to get a degree in computer science. Both our families were living in South Florida and it was a big move to sell our home and buy another, as well as transfer to a new college. As it turned out, it appeared to be a big mistake that would have many dire consequences for our family, but it was something I was driven to do, so I felt things were still in God control and the painful experiences that followed was part of my karma.
There were no local study groups I could attend there, so I often drove down to Miami to attend services at their teaching center, which were members of staff who volunteered to come to Miami to start a group. It was about a 45 minute drive one way, plus the couple of hours time for the service, which would take me away from my duties at home and time with my husband. My husband started spending more time with his mother who did not like me at all. We were arguing more and his anger with me increased. I thought marriage counseling would help but I had to go alone, as he would not attend, but it did not help. Eventually I decided to leave him for awhile and see if he really cared enough to stay together, but as soon as I left his mother moved into our house to take care of him and I felt my message to him would not work with her interference so I returned. He graduated the next year and immediately took a job to return to the Navy base in the Bahamas, leaving me to take care of the house and children alone.
The Move to Camelot and Church Headquarters
The church has a religious three month school called Summit University. I had wanted to attend as soon as I heard about it and with my husband away I thought I would apply to go. A few weeks before school was to start I rented out my house and had made arrangements to leave when I got a phone call from staff that I was not accepted for that term. I was devastated, having already rented out my house and now having no place to live with the three small boys, and felt I could not suddenly evict my new tenants. The idea came to me to go ahead with my plan to drive to California and live there for awhile. It was radical, but my marriage was by then only a quasi marriage for I knew we could not repair it if he was living away from me, while refusing to get counseling as well. He had said before he left that I loved God more than him and that was not going to be easily overcome since we were on different wavelengths in our beliefs that had been aggravated by my church attendance.
Thus began a new phase in my life with ascended masters and the church after I moved to California. Miracles were happening that I attributed to my association with my new path and religion. I went headlong into participating in all church activities. while working full time and raising the boys alone. It was not good for the boys as they spent many an hour in school or childcare, but it was hard to be a part of the church and not do so. Sunday service started at ten in the morning and often did not end until late in the afternoon. Saturday night service was one of the more important services of the week, dedicated to St. Germain and freedom, and you just could not miss that service. The boys would be in child care all evening. I would then have to carry then asleep to the car, one at a time, and drive home, only to get up the next morning to go to Sunday service.
When we arrived in California no one wanted to rent to me with children as well as my being from being out of state. After a week of living in my car to save the only money I had to pay for rent and the deposit, I was very discouraged. The idea came to me to go to the coast and camp for a few days and give the boys a change of scenery. The drive through Malibu Canyon to the coast was very uplifting and after our first night camping I decided to go back that day and try again to find a place to live. I immediately found an apartment in Thousand Oaks, about a fifteen minute drive to Camelot, the church's Malibu headquarters. I discovered soon after that the tenant above me was a family who were members of the church, which was very comforting. I felt that was a victory because I had changed my attitude and that caused the success in finding a place so quickly the next day.
I first got a job helping another church member clean houses in Malibu. Then I applied for a legal secretary job. It was the perfect job and I really wanted it, it was close to Camelot that I could pick the children up from school in time and it paid well. Yet I found myself surrendering the job to God and God's will for me. It was a profound moment for me, for within fifteen minutes of surrendering the job to God's will I received a call that they were giving me the job.
Unusual Behavior
Thus I began my life for the first time close to the church's headquarters. The boys were attending their Montessori school and that was very difficult. If you arrived late in picking up the children they would charge you a dollar for every minute you were late. A teacher would check each child before entering the classroom that they were dressed well and had clean fingernails. The children would then begin school with reciting a fifteen minute child's rosary to Mother Mary. My oldest was four and he did not take well to giving a rosary, although I knew nothing about his behavior as I was not told until I was called into the office one day. There they informed me that they had taken a video of him and shown it to the Messenger (Elizabeth Clare Prophet) and he was being terminated from the school for a year. He had also bitten another child, which I was not informed of as well. He had never bitten anyone before, and although some children will try it once and then are corrected, I was not a part of that scenario.
To say I was shocked and dismayed was an understatement. It was like going before a tribunal, as several teachers were present, and the idea that they had gone behind my back without first making me aware of any disciplinary problems was inappropriate. Yet this was the ascended master teachings, and this was the Messenger, and these were her teachers. Obviously, it was a new dominion that they could do whatever they wanted as the prodigal for the church was outside of a public system. I simply accepted what they said without a word of defense and took my children home. But I knew I could not stay in California and keep the other boys in Montessori and have my one son attend a public school. There was no way I could manage it. I called my husband and asked him if our son could live with him in the Bahamas, and he readily agreed.
I also found out that the reason I was denied attending the university for that quarter was that the school had so many students apply for that quarter having been attracted to a Kuan Yin sponsorship that they had to turn students away. Each quarter is supposedly sponsored by an ascended master and that quarter was sponsored by Kuan Yin, as well as the next two quarters. The maximum room to house students was about 300 at that time. The only message I received for why I was turned down was supposedly from the Messenger, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God". It was a strange message to me, as I believed I was living for God. I took the message to mean that I had something wrong with me and thus I was not acceptable to attend, which was most likely not the case. The next spring quarter attendance was finally down but I did not apply for it having no money to attend, but the church called me up and invited me to attend! I declined, telling them that I could not, which piqued my curiosity as to why I was suddenly acceptable to go to Summit University when their attendance was down.
Leaving Camelot
My husband came to visit the boys at Christmas time. After he left I felt this overpowering urge to try and make our marriage work again. I did not know how I could but I left Malibu and the church after six months of living near them. I found it accelerating and troublesome at the same time being near the church. When I went to attend my first church service in the court, the area where church services are held, I was turned away and sent to the annex where there were television screens. Why? The court can only hold so many people and every service the overflow had to go to the annex. Since I was new they asked me if I had ever attended before and since I hadn't so I was a prime candidate to be sent to the annex. This rule remained over the years. When I worked on staff part of my job was to drive buses, help in the kitchen, do child care and usher at services and conferences, while my main job was to work in the editorial department transcribing tapes or typing from hard copies of typewritten lectures or meetings into the computer. When I ushered I was given the direction to turn away any new students who had never been to a service before. The church appeared to believe that new students could not handle being in a service and how to appropriately behave.
As I mentioned, services were long and no one left until the Messenger came out and gave her lecture and dictation, and sometimes she did not appear until afternoon. The temperature in the court was always freezing and you had to wear a coat. The reason for the low temperatures was that the Messenger would get very hot under the lights and giving dictations. There was not a sound to be heard when the Messenger was giving dictations. If you had a cough or would make any noise you were asked to leave before the dictation began. You were asked not to take any notes during a dictation for the reason that taking notes is a mind activity and you were supposed to be meditating within your heart.
Child care was hard on the children, as you never knew how long you would be leaving them. There was no inside cafeteria area, only an outdoor court with tables. During school the children had to eat outside. Since there was a lot of fruit served the wasps were constantly around the tables and on your food. The California Coastal Commission denied the church a permit to build a building, just one of the common harassments the church received from the local government over the years. We were also expected, as parents, to take care of our children during the lunch hour. It was impossible to do and have a job so you had to hire one of the teachers or someone to come sit with your children every lunch hour. You were expected to pick up your children by 5:15. That means for someone whose job ends at 5 p.m., which mine did, you had fifteen minutes to get to school. I just made it every day, but I had to rush out the door exactly at five to get there in time.
I also discovered, as another church defector mentioned in relating their experience with the church, that these ascended masters at conferences would give a dictation praising or appearing to raise up the congregation, making everyone feel good about themselves or their path and their service, only to have the next dictation come forth with a reprimanding tone that we were not living up to our potential, or some other calamity that was supposedly happening. I had a dream one night where I was on the beach in a car, just at the edge of the water. A wave would come and lift me up high and suddenly pull out from under me and I would fall with the car. In dreams a car is said to represent you and your four lower bodies, which the masters teach us we are supposed to have. I felt that dream was giving me a message that I appeared to be raised higher from my experience with the church and the masters, only to have the rug pulled out from under me and thereby I am suddenly dropped back down without any support.
I did not blame the teachings, I rather felt I must be the problem that I count not maintain the high level the masters were bringing to us. In my next part of my story I will share my experiences at Summit University and what was going on inside the church during those years.