Course Charting – Path to Mystery

I don’t remember the exact moment I first became interested in mysterious things, but I do remember where I lived and what it was. My family moved from California to Alaska when I was four. It was the perfect location for a young mind to discover the idea of mystery. So much about Alaska is mysterious. Situated so far north, the sun barely rises in the dead of winter and doesn’t completely set in the summer. It’s also remote, cut off from the rest of the United State by a whole other county. And it has a certain untamed quality to it. It’s no wonder they call it the last frontier. That’s the where. The what was dinosaurs and outer space. As a child, I was fascinated by the strange creatures of the past who left us only their bones to ponder; their size and ferocity so unlike anything we can see at a zoo. And I was captivated by the vastness of the cosmos; undoubtedly filled with all manner of objects and creatures unlike anything we have on Earth. These two mysteries shaped my childhood. During the long lighted summers, I would dig in the vacant lot beside our house in search of the bones of a T-Rex or Triceratops. During the long dark winters, I turned my attention skyward, looking for a light that could be a UFO from another planet.

I guess these interests came from television shows like Land of the Lost, Lost in Space, and Star Trek. I loved these old shows, but the one that went beyond entertainment for me was The Twilight Zone. The first episode I saw was the one where a WWI pilot flies through a cloud and ends up in the 1960s. It was my first exposure to the concept of time travel. As fantastic as it sounds, I was enthralled by the idea and the possibilities it presented. I was only ten at the time, but the themes of these shows were already shaping the way I looked at life.

By the time I got to high school, I developed other interest – music, girls, skiing, girls, and music. But an experience during my senior year brought my childhood fascination firmly into my maturing psyche. It happened at a restaurant where I was dining with a friend and his family. We were joined by a man they called the doctor who talked about crystals and pyramids, and how they amplified human brain power. The conversation continued from the restaurant to the guy’s house where I saw what he had been talking about. There were pyramids over everything – a bowl of fruit, the doghouse, his bed, an entire room. He claimed that pyramid power prevented fruit spoilage and enhanced dreams. He also had “top secret” books that contained the testimony of an air force pilot who claimed to have had a series of encounters with UFOs and aliens from the Pleiades star system. From this book I learned that these alien pilots were all women because the males were so aggressive no human pilot would survive to tell the tale.

I’m a lot older now with a much more mature perspective. However, I must confess that I am still intrigued with mysterious things. While I no longer believe in a lot of the things I did as a kid, I do sense there is much more to this reality than we know. I’ve learned to look beneath the surface of what our physical senses tell us, and I have become wary of so-called conventional wisdom. I remain firmly dedicated to the discovery of the truth, and I have found that the way of truth sometimes leads deep into the realm of unconventional thinking.

So there you have it. What began as a simple childhood fascination has remained well into my adult years. And what’s more, I now believe there is great truth shrouded in mysteries that are waiting to be discovered.