Spiritual Military

In honor of Memorial Day, I want to remind you that I was once a Captain in the US Air Force … and now I work in transformational entertainment and write inspirational blogs like “Tell The Truth, Let The Peace Fall Where It May“ and “A Happy You is Good for the Planet!”

Tonight at author Marianne Williamson’s Monday night lecture in Beverly Hills, I asked all the servicemen and women in the room to stand up. There were about 10 of us there. I wasn’t alone.

Yes, inside the military there is a tremendous amount of dense thought and strictly ego-fueled behavior. But there are also a lot of thoughtful people wrestling with deep, courageous questions like what did they really come to do on this planet and who are we as authentic, soul-filled human beings. The military can kind of force that inquiry on a person in countless ways.

Personally, my military service was deeply distressing … spiritually speaking. I believe I served well, but I knew military service as we’ve created it wasn’t what I came here to do. Still, living in that intense pressure cooker forced me to dive deeper into the big questions with an urgency and intensity that might have been missing had I simply been working a regular job making decent money.

It’s easy to pay taxes and then completely overlook how our money empowers our government to wage the wars it wages. It’s not so easy to wear the uniform and be the one actually waging the war.

Although I never directly experienced combat, I participated in activities that directly enabled it. And I struggled with that fact immensely at a young age.

The military is an intense pressure cooking environment for the body, mind and spirit like no other widely experienced manmade environment. Although it took years for me to really understand the soulful life lessons I was learning in that experience, I wouldn’t be the man I am today without having served in the military.

Believe it or not, the military was essential in helping me wake up to the truth of who I am. 

I’m hardly the only one experiencing that.

There were 10-ish former military servicemen and women listening to Marianne Williamson’s lecture tonight about war through the filter of A Course in Miracles. Just a few days ago a young active duty soldier found me on the internet and reached out to ask big questions about spirituality.

The essential point I want you to get is that there are thoughtful, spiritually-orienting people moving about in the military. 

You know, the military might even be part of God’s plan in helping us to wake up to the brilliant truth of who we are. I can’t know that for sure God has anything to do with it, but I can tell you that such a thing is, in fact, happening. Because it happened to me.

Indeed, God bless the military.