There comes a moment on the spiritual path where healing… just isn’t enough. Not because the work is done, but because something new is asking to emerge. A deeper responsibility. A quieter, bolder light. That moment? It’s not confusion. It’s calling. This week’s post is for those who feel the stir. For those who know it’s time to move from clearing to carrying.
The Unique Balancing Power of Red Coral
Gemstones are resonant objects, objects that pulsate and vibrate with the resonance of specific planets and cadences, providing us connectivity and understanding.
A gemstone, at its very basic definition, is a mineral which has been cut or polished. These minerals are created through the rhythmic creation processes of Earth — from volcanic eruptions to intense pressure under the layers of Earth. It’s a beautiful process whose product – gems – reflect and capture the energies and motions of the Earth, and it is these captured rhythms which we strive to sync.
But not all stones come from those processes. In fact, one stone – red coral – comes from a unique and altogether wonderful process on Earth. I want to share this process with you.
Red coral comes from a life cycle. We’ve all seen images of the beautiful coral reefs in the oceans, or perhaps taken a snorkeling trip through the underwater forests. The coral that forms these reefs are the exoskeletons of living organisms.
Coral was alive. These small, precious living things live, thrive, and die in colonies. As they continuously grow and die, they deposit small amounts of calcium carbonate – the same mineral that makes up pearls and eggshells. These small deposits grow over time, building these magnificent underwater forests that we call reefs.
Within these mineral skeletons, new corals continuously grow, giving rise to coral’s nickname: living rock. This lifecycle is what makes coral so vibrant, so unique among the gemstones that we study and align with. It’s a powerful, deeply connective stone that is in tune with the oceanic circle of life.
Red coral, due both to its red color and its very deep and root resonance to life, aligns with the planet Mars. Mars, which we affectionately call the Red Planet, exists as a symbol of masculine virility, passion, and war throughout cultures in the East and the West — in both Vedic and Western astrology. When properly aligned, Mars’s energy brings vitality, strength, resolve, and passion. When overly charged, Mars’s energy can bring anger, irrationality, pain, and destruction.
The ancients knew this. The Greek thinkers specifically understood that Mars energy, whom they called Ares, ran the risk of becoming too aggressive, too warlike. They understood that Mars energy needed to be moderated. They understood that Mars energy could consume an unwary soul. In those days, they would call upon the wisdom of Athena — the goddess of wisdom and strategy — to moderate that passion. Today, while you still may call upon your higher divine wisdoms, I encourage you to also look to precious red coral. Remember, within this precious gemstone is an entire ecosystem of life, death, creation, and destruction.
This tether to life and death, unique to coral among all gemstones, imbues this stone with a profoundly moderating energy, which helps you filter out the aggressive powers that Mars can bring. This is the beauty of red coral. It strengthens you with the powerful gifts of Mars, while preventing you from falling into the throes of irrational passion.
When you connect with Mars, and I encourage you to do so, do remember that you are dealing with a powerful, primordial energy. Respect the vast, passionate, masculine power that flows through Mars, and understand that this energy should be moderated and mediated. You may also wish to call upon the strength and wisdom of the Pallas Athena. Her energy is best thought of as strong, even-tempered, intellectual, and righteous.
The beautiful and oceanic power native to red coral provides an excellent and protective conduit for this energy. I would love to teach you more about how to connect with the vibrational frequencies of gemstones and planets such as red coral and Mars. If you’re interested, please come and join me at the Shift Network, where I’ll soon be teaching a seven-week course on Vibrational Medicine.
The Science Behind Vibrational Medicine
You are a living, breathing field of energy. Your body is made up of molecules and atoms that produce energy, which is always in motion. So like everyone and everything else in the universe, you are creating energy through your vibrations.
My field of energy medicine is also called vibrational medicine because we use the energy within and around you to benefit your health.
Research has shown how the body’s electrical and magnetic energies kickstart the chemical processes of the body, and there is evidence that these energies definitely impact your health.
Vibrations work in a rhythm. There are big rhythmic patterns, like the ocean tides or the changing seasons. Inside your body, your beating heart, the rate of your breathing, and circadian rhythms can all be felt and measured.
But there are also much smaller vibrations happening inside your cells. Researchers have even been able to detect the nanovibrations of a single strand of hair!
All these big and small vibrations together generate waves of electromagnetic energy. The vibrations and the energy they create can change your cells, which in turn affect the way your body is working.
The molecules of your body vibrate at different rates, which can move faster or slower when things change. For example, a change in temperature can affect a molecule’s vibration.
What those of us in energy medicine have long known, and researchers are now studying, is the way your body’s rhythmic vibrations, and therefore your health, are affected by your thoughts and emotions. Anxious thoughts, for example, trigger stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which speed up or slow down your heart rate. A continued change in vibration over time can affect your health.
Your personal energy field and its chakras are powered by your emotions. That’s such a key point – let me repeat it: your thoughts and emotions affect your field and your rate of vibration. If you are inundated with negative thoughts, you will vibrate at a lower frequency. If you are exposed to an ongoing low frequency energy, you will feel negative and may eventually become ill.
Think of the way the vibrations of music can affect how you think and feel, and thus affect your body. You know how the music in the movie amps up the intensity of what you’re seeing on the screen. The soundtrack for action movies, for example, pumps up the tension and your sense of excitement at key points with a rapid tempo, while chick-flics inevitably have a string orchestra playing love songs to lift you into a heart space.
If you change your thoughts and emotions, and even your environment, you can slow down or speed up the vibrations that are happening at the cellular level. A change in even the smallest nanovibrations can influence how you feel and the health of your body. It’s the mind-body connection.
Science doesn’t yet understand how vibrational energy does what it does in your body, but in vibrational medicine we see how a change in your body’s vibrations can shift your mood, improve your health, and help you realize your goals and dreams.
You are very susceptible to changes in frequency – the rate of vibration. There is plenty of evidence that links positive patterns of thoughts and feelings to better health and overall well-being. A high enough frequency, created by vibrations of joy, peace, and forgiveness, and you feel good, happy to be alive, and grateful for your spiritual awakening and your community. If your vibration dips too low, you may feel fearful, confused, angry, or in despair.
My goal, as a teacher of vibrational medicine, is to help you elevate your frequency, so you vibrate at a higher rate and be filled with positivity, wellness, and light.
The higher your frequency, the more likely you are to experience an initiation, those illusive step-ups in spirituality that I’m famous for helping occasion: spiritual breakthroughs in which you are admitted to the higher planes. Just as initiations are forms of higher consciousness, so too their existence is predicated on higher frequency wavelengths.
When our atoms vibrate together – or resonate – they form a connected consciousness. That is why when you resonate with another being, you feel less like a solitary figure and more part of the whole. Raising your individual consciousness requires raising your vibratory resonance, so you can connect with others and with the universe at large. Your field must oscillate faster and more intensely to resonate with the manifest beauty the universe has to offer you.
Want to experience a higher frequency? Come join me this coming Saturday, June 5, at 10:00 a.m. Pacific, on Shift Network, as I go in-depth on this topic and lead a guided meditation to do that very thing!
Standing Still in the Solstice
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about standing still. About pausing, breathing.
We’re approaching the Winter Solstice, the time of year where the day is shortest in the Northern Hemisphere. At the arctic circle, it’s completely dark for 24 hours.
I know that many of us have felt that we’re facing our own, personal winter solstices. Our communities feel fractured. Uncertainty, loss, and grief are now part of the atmosphere.
We all want to know, “when will this darkness end?”
But the word solstice doesn’t refer to this darkness. It refers to something different.
Imagine, for a moment, an invisible line in the sky. Day or night. It bisects the sky into the North and South, just like the equator around our planet. We call this the celestial equator. Twice a year (at the equinoxes), our Sun crosses this equator. Right now, it is heading South. On the Solstice, the Sun reaches its southernmost point in our sky. It takes a pause.
It stands still.
That’s what the word “solstice” refers to. The Sun “standing still.”
With the Sun’s pause comes a host of other occurrences. The shortest day, the longest night. It’s easy to look at these extremes and feel a sense of foreboding – that somehow night has enveloped the day, and the Sun itself has become frozen. But this sense of foreboding ignores the beauty and hope that the Winter Solstice represents. And embracing this beauty might be the key to us breaking through our own Winter Solstices.
Like a wayward traveler who has voyaged to a distant land, the Sun finally stands still on December 21st. It pauses, holding its place in our sky, before finally returning North.
Think about it. The Winter Solstice is only the shortest day because the sun stands still and then returns North. It’s only the darkest day because the next day is slightly brighter. It’s only the lowest point because the light turns back.
The Winter Solstice is the Northern Hemisphere’s rock bottom. It’s the “darkest before the dawn moment.” And this “darkest before the dawn” can inform how we journey our own, Spiritual Solstices.
Our journeys this year have been unexpected and perilous. Oftentimes, it feels like we’re a passenger in our journeys, as opposed to a pilot. But we have a choice that we can make – an action that can give us insight, strength, and (hopefully) some community in these fragmented times.
We can pause.
On December 21st, I encourage all of us to pause – collectively, though separated. I want us all to feel the faint rays of the Sun and imbue ourselves with the energy of a star and a planet who have paused in extremity.
Absorb this energy. Coax out the intuition of this celestial stillness.
Let’s pause each of our journeys – for just that brief day – to take stock of how far we’ve gone, where we’ve come from, and where we wish to go. Let’s stand in our stillness, and look back at the joys we wish to recapture.
We can examine our choices, our habits, our relationships; and decide how we will carry forward.
The Winter Solstice is a blessed time! It’s a rare time for introspection, reflection, and change. This energy is mirrored in our cultural celebrations around winter. New Year’s Resolutions? What is that but a pause and a change of direction?
I know that the Winter Holidays can be a circus. We all work double-time to purchase that perfect Hannukah gift, make that perfect Christmas roast, and plan that perfect New Year’s celebration. It’s hard to pause when there’s so much to do!
But your spirit deserves a Solstice.
Embody that energy of the Winter Solstice in order to become an active participant in your own journey. It feels counter-intuitive, but by simply taking a day to be still, you will gain unprecedented agency and insight into your own voyage through life.
It’s always darkest before the dawn.
Deborah
Benefits of Daily Meditation: Turning Back the Hands of Time
Have you ever daydreamed of turning back the clock to a more youthful, more energetic, more carefree time in life? Or perhaps having at your disposal a magical cosmic “Undo” button that could erase certain effects that have accumulated over the course of time—from stress, abuse, and destructive habits that have left you with less than perfect health or a waning enthusiasm for life.
I experienced the need for a second chance at a clean slate earlier in life than most. I was just out of law school and not even 25 when I received a diagnosis of cancer. That cancer was just the last in a whole host of serious problems I’d had. Those of you who are familiar with my story know that I had a horrendous childhood filled with sexual and emotional abuse. I’m certain I had post-traumatic stress disorder by the time I was four. By my teenage years, I was a complete wreck. At that point, I began doing everything possible to numb my feelings and run from them—I smoked, drank, took drugs, and acted out all over town. I was anxious. I was depressed. When my cancer announcement came, it was really time for a change. By then, I needed some truly powerful help to undo all that I had been through so that I could continue to live.
[/vc_column_text]

Amazingly, I found it—the way to turn back time and release the many effects of all of the stress that my mind and body had endured. That way was meditation. A daily practice of 20 minutes, twice a day, gave me much more clarity to address my disease and ultimately helped me to heal my cancer, release my addictions, end my destructive streak, and get on my true life path. I can honestly say that meditation is the best thing I have ever done for myself.
I am not alone in this discovery. Science and religion alike have studied and documented the vast numbers of benefits of meditation, revealing that meditation has a positive effect on people suffering from or at risk for many physical and mental health conditions, including high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, congestive heart failure, stroke, diabetes, menopause, ADHD, memory loss, anxiety, obesity, and much more. It was even found to be twice as effective in helping people to quit smoking than the other popular remedies. Given that smoking is the number one cause of preventive death in the U.S., this is no small benefit! The studies also show advantages in other areas of our lives, such as making us more effective on the job and in school. Later this week, I talk about these studies and more in this free webinar.
So what is meditation and how does it create so much good for our bodies and minds?

A big part of meditation’s success on improving conditions like those listed above is its powerful ability to reduce and release stress, as stress is often a precursor to so many of our physical and emotional problems. But the manner in which it does this happens at a lot deeper level than many people might think. Meditation works at the level of our consciousness.
There are four states of consciousness: waking, sleeping, dreaming, and meditating. So, meditation is actually a different state of consciousness from our waking life. It is a far more expanded state. Many people think that the purpose of meditation is to tune out, to get away from it all. While that’s partially true, the real purpose of meditation is actually to tune in—to take the journey into expanded consciousness that meditation provides.
Meditation expands our consciousness by helping us to get into the space, the gap, between our thoughts and taps into the incredible energy that exists there. So you have a thought, and then another thought, but between the two, there’s a little space. According to the ancients, this space between the thoughts is the portal to the infinite intelligence of the universe, our Source. Some people call this energy “Spirit”; some call it “God”; some call it the “Universal Energy Field” or the “Unified Field.”
Once you get into that gap, you’ll find that, through this all-pervasive web of energy, everyone and everything is connected to everything else. You also discover that this universal field of energy is unlimited; it’s pure potential, and anything can be accomplished when you’re connected to it.

When we connect to the Unified Field through meditation, our bodies and psyches are cleared, leaving us refreshed, restored, and balanced. Just 20 minutes of meditation offers as much rest as 1-2 hours of sleep! The effect is truly a turning back of the clock, where we look and feel healthier and younger.
We can experience other profound changes by tapping into the Unified Field through meditation. To heal ourselves and fix our lives, we need information. We need to root out the true cause of what is ailing us, and find the most expeditious and effective route to a cure. I certainly learned this with my experience of cancer. When you tap into the Unified Field, you are accessing life’s great encyclopedia—where every fact of the universe, past, present and future, exists and is accessible. You are also connecting to your own highest wisdom., and the insights that come from meditation help us to heal every area of our lives.
In this way, meditation paves the way for emotional healing. On an energetic level, it helps to remove any blockages that come from holding on to anger and resentment. Meditation thereby ushers in what is perhaps the most crucial part of the healing process, forgiveness. It opens us up to our connection to other people, and to All That Is. In this way, meditation also paves the way for global peace and well-being.
That brings me to the most important reason I can think of to meditate. Even after all of the benefits I’ve touched upon here—the better health, becoming wiser, doing better at school or work, experiencing forgiveness, and having less anxiety, more creativity, greater joy, looking and feeling younger—I still haven’t told you the real purpose of meditation.

The most important outcome of your meditating every day is that by expanding your awareness, by bringing yourself into balance and experiencing greater peace, by raising your consciousness—you are actually assisting every other person and creature on the planet to do the same. Remember, we’re all connected by one vast field of energy. The ripple of energy you send out into the world is a reflection of your inner state of being. Your ripple touches and affects others. If you’re uplifted, you uplift them too. If we’re all in a higher state, we just might feel more inclined to help one another and come up with some harmonious and creative solutions to our global problems. What a different world that would be!
I can’t recommend enough that you learn to meditate—for your own well-being, for those you love, and for making a positive difference on the planet and fulfilling your life’s potential.
If you’d like to know more about meditation, register for this free event:
Clear Energetic Chaos and Create a Better Base for a Meditative Practice.
This event is perfect for beginners looking to establish a proper base for their practice. But is also great for the advanced, experienced meditator that wants to revitalize their current practice.
It’s Possible to Be Insanely Happy (Even When Everything Sucks)
Does this idea blow your mind — that you can be insanely happy even when everything sucks?
I know it sounds crazy, especially in 2020. Can you really be happy when we’re facing COVID, social and political turmoil, not to mention any personal issues with work, finances, relationships?
There was a long period in my life when I was anything but happy. I would never have believed in such a lunatic idea as actually being happy despite what I was living through. At the time, I had serious issues with alcohol, drugs, extreme sports, and a little thing called cervical cancer.
But there is a key to happiness that wise cultures have all shared — from ancient India and Greece to the Mayans to the Nootka nation and many more. My father is the one who not only told me about this key, he modeled it for me.
Next week, I’ll be presenting on this key, AND I’ll be sharing five steps to happiness — happiness even in times of intense turbulence.
Free Online Event!
The Shift Summit & Music Festival
An Epic 4-Day Gathering of Changemakers Lighting
the Way to a Better Future
September 18-21, 2020
I hope you’ll join me because throughout our lives in our modern culture, we’ve actually been living the very opposite of the key to happiness that I can’t wait to share with you. I believe the steps I’ll be laying out are absolutely essential to your forward progress in life. And they have ripple effects: everyone you come into contact with will feel the vibration you’ll be radiating.
Are you more than ready to uplift yourself and help bring happiness to others?
The whole summit I’m a part of is all about setting a course for a new world of happiness for every single one of us.
You can join me right here to experience my talk on How to Be Insanely Happy, and invite your family, friends, coworkers, and community to join you!
Journey to Your Inner Witness: Holding Your Center in the Face of a Storm
The ancient rishis, the seers and sages of India, taught that the “Inner Witness” is the key to holding your center in the face of a storm…
The Inner Witness approaches each situation with curiosity and observation. As if watching a movie, the Inner Witness engages in nonattachment — allowing thoughts, feelings, and worries to pass through.
This does not mean we don’t take situations seriously, we do. Especially right now.
During this unprecedented time, and all the ways COVID-19 is impacting our daily lives, our communities, and our global family, is a signal that we are being called to a deep level of grounding, self-healing, and self-care at this time.
The path forward is to find your center in the face of the storm…
So, the question you might be asking yourself is, “Just how do I do that?”
When the impulse is to “do something,” to take action, to move forward, to “think” of answers… the solution may actually seem counterintuitive.
The invitation right now is for BEING not DOING.
Your Inner Witness is here to guide you. It’s part of your energy body and it vibrates with the higher frequencies of your being.
From your center, you can also bear witness to all the positive shifts that are unfolding in lockstep with the spread of the virus. Humankindness at its finest. Strangers helping strangers, communities coming together, and growing solidarity replacing growing division.
I had an opportunity to be interviewed by Lisa Bonnice at the Shift Network and shared a special teaching and guided practice on just this — how to connect with your Inner Witness and how critical it is for us to do at this time.
When you watch the video, you’ll also receive a short journeying practice, which will connect you with your Inner Witness. Watch here:
I invite you to stop everything you’re doing and to just listen in as we do this practice, together. At the end of the guided journey, we also opened up for some of your most pressing questions.
Topics like:
How can this help me right now? Especially with everything happening in the world?
How can I show up for others, and not contribute to the fear? And also not take on their energy or panic?
How can this help address what we’re dealing with now in a global pandemic?
I also discuss the important link between the vedas and the chakras, and why integrating science and ancient wisdom is so important for us right now too.
I hope you’ll take a few minutes and enjoy this guided meditation. And, if you would like to join me to discover deep journeying practices for healing and transformation, I invite you to check out my upcoming course at The Shift Network (which you’ll hear about in the video too). You can get all the details here.
How to Activate Your Chakras With Ancient Vedic Wisdom
“The Seven Gods have seven spears and seven lights. They hold seven glories.” — Rg Veda 8.28.5 (Translated by David Frawley)
You’ve likely experienced the profound healing that’s possible in working with your body’s innate wisdom.
Guidance for activating this inner resource is rooted in one of civilization’s most ancient texts — the Vedas (Sanskrit for “knowledge” or wisdom).
The Vedas are the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, a body of religious texts, spiritual writings, poems, and hymns that were passed down through oral tradition.
These time-honored texts encompass Divine knowledge and bring to life the deep, healing vibrations of consciousness.
Woven throughout these ancient scriptures, are references to the chakras…
The Rg Veda (one of the holiest of the four sacred texts of the Vedas) directly references the cakra — the Sanskrit word for “wheel,” “disc” or “circle” — more than 29 times.
Described as moving in circular motion with a cyclical nature, the cakra are also depicted through vivid imagery and symbols, such as “seven wheels” and “rays of light.”
Yet, you don’t have to become a Vedic scholar to transform your energy field… and access higher states of consciousness…
You can tap into the healing frequencies of these energy centers within you through Vedic Energy Medicine — integrating the ancient wisdom of the Vedas with the sacred vibrations of your subtle energy body.
Higher Heart Chakra: The Healing Power of Unconditional Love
If your mind is full of negative thoughts, or you’re feeling drained due to a chronic health condition, such as depression, the Thymus Chakra unlocks the healing power of your “Higher Heart.”
Stuck energy can create stuck emotions and negative thoughts… just as an infection that makes the thymus gland, which supports the body’s immune function, lose its ability to fight off colds and other attacks to your immune system.
The powerful, energetic vibrations of this chakra can help you clear blocked emotions in the thymus gland, which also creates illness.
Simply tapping in the center of your chest will start the process of activating your higher heart, and help you to forgive others and forgive yourself. As you move into the higher heart, you vibrate at a higher frequency and can feel love and joy.
When the Thymus Chakra is in balance, you have access to the higher love of the Divine… connecting your heart energy to your thoughts and words….and guiding you to share your truth.
If you would like to experience the healing power of your entire energy body, release emotional blocks, and access higher levels of consciousness — join me for Discover the Healing Vibrations of Vedic Energy Medicine here.
Christmas is a time when you get homesick
Are you looking forward to a holiday right out of a Norman Rockwell painting, with the whole family singing around the piano or enjoying a spirited snowball fight before gathering, rosy-cheeked and glowing, around the holiday table? Or are you dreading long days of forced togetherness, the rehashing of old grievances and the airing of new ones as your family falls into its old, dysfunctional patterns? For most, holiday gatherings with family fall somewhere between the two scenarios. These three tips will help you to navigate though the family minefields, large and small, with your spirit and sanity intact.
Put the power of forgiveness and unconditional love to work for you:
As a spiritual teacher, I encourage my students to give themselves and those around them the gift of forgiveness and unconditional love. This holds especially true during the holidays.
If you know in advance that you’ll be seeing a family member who has wronged you, take the time to forgive them before the event. Close your eyes and imagine the person standing in front of you. As you breathe in, silently say, May you be happy. May you be well. May you be safe. May you be peaceful and at ease. This powerful Buddhist exercise, called “Metta,” dissolves anger, resentment, and guilt, and will help you to feel more loving and in control as you journey “over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house.” When you arrive, don’t undo the good you’ve done by telling the person that you have forgiven them—that will only bring the old issues back to the forefront and put them on the defensive. This processing is for your benefit. Simply send them love, and move on!
Stay outside of the emotional fray, and celebrate your own spiritual progress:
The holidays are not the time to resolve old issues, or confront other people. Enjoy the time with family, and set the limits that you need to keep yourself healthy emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
Take care of yourself. Take walks outdoors, meditate and consume alcohol, sugar, and caffeine in moderation. If you’re tired, give yourself permission to leave a family event early. You’re not obligated to stay till the bitter end. Fighting and drama tends to escalate as it gets late, especially if the alcohol is flowing. If there is family drama, step out of the fray and observe; pretend you’re watching a play, rather than allowing yourself to be pulled in.
Finally, capture the holiday spirit by looking outside of yourself and your family circle:
Are you trying to recapture the breathless excitement and holiday magic that you remember from your childhood? Or do you have old, traumatic memories of the season that you’re desperate to replace with happier ones? As an adult, you can experience the very best of the holidays, the spirit of joy and love, but you might not find it wrapped in a box, or around the table with your extended family. For many people, the formula for a light-filled season includes not just family time, but time spent alone and time spent helping others.
Gandhi said that the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. Don’t depend on the “big event” to fill you with the holiday spirit. If, despite your best efforts to forgive and forget, an overdose of family time is causing you to dwell too much on past hurts and disappointments, shift your focus outside of yourself. Figure out a way to help others, and by doing so, you’ll nourish your own spirit. Serve holiday dinners at a homeless shelter, deliver gifts to the lonely or sick, visit a nursing home to sing carols, send cards and packages to the troops, and remember what the holidays are really about—bringing more light into the world. Doing that is a sure way to fill your own soul with the spirit of the season!
Learn from This Great Modern Philosopher of Ojai
We have finally moved into the new location of the Deborah King Center in beautiful Ojai. I love it! Ojai has such an extraordinarily high spiritual vibration, and a history rich in spiritual endeavors.
It wasn’t only the Chumash tribe that called Ojai home. So did Jiddu Krishnamurti, one of the great philosophers and spiritual teachers of our modern era. He talked about everyday concerns, life in a society filled with violence and corruption, an abiding respect for nature, and everyone’s search for security and happiness. He precisely explained how the human mind works, and what the practice of meditation can bring to daily life.
Krishnamurti’s story is unusual. He was born in 1895 into a Telugu family in colonial India, one of 11 children (six of whom survived childhood). He lived next to the headquarters for the Theosophical Society in Chennai (Madras). When he was eight years old, he was discovered on the grounds of the headquarters by Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, the leaders of the Society, who raised and groomed him as the next great World Teacher to guide the evolution of humankind. He and his brother Nitya were privately tutored in school subjects as well as in rigorous exercise and sports, theosophical and religious lessons, yoga and meditation, and British culture. Later the boys were brought to Europe to continue their education, and Krishnamurti gave his first public speech in England.
The Theosophical Society established the Order of the Star in the East (OSE) to prepare the world for Krishnamurti, the Coming of the World Teacher. But by the time he was 29, Krishnamurti rejected the title, dissolved the OSE, and withdrew from the Theosophy organization. Sadly, he had been sexually assaulted by a higher-up in the organization as a young boy and, rightfully, he no longer wanted to be affiliated with the Society or anything remotely religious. He dedicated himself to working toward a psychological revolution in the minds of humankind in order to bring about radical change in society. He wrote many books, gave talks and held discussion through his non-profit foundations in India, Great Britain, and the U.S.
In 1922, Krishnamurti and his brother and companion, Nitya, stayed in the Ojai Valley, thinking the climate would be good for Nitya, who had tuberculosis. They, too, loved Ojai and a cottage and property were found for them and Ojai became Krishnamurti’s official residence.
It was in Ojai that Krishnamurti had a life-changing experience, one that wasn’t directed by his mentors. First he went through a three-day spiritual experience of mystical union and immense peace, and a few weeks later went through a longer condition that he called “the process,” which recurred almost nightly until his death. These experiences were described as “the sacredness” or “the otherness.” (Clearly, he had experienced one of the higher initiations that I conduct as well as describe in my writings, e.g., see chapter 8 of my most recent book, Heal Yourself – Heal the World).
As he wrote: … [I] woke up early with that strong feeling of otherness, of another world that is beyond all thought…there is a heightening of sensitivity. Sensitivity, not only to beauty but also to all other things. The blade of grass was astonishingly green; that one blade of grass contained the whole spectrum of colour; it was intense, dazzling and such a small thing…”
The Krishnamurti Foundation of America founded in 1969 is in Ojai. They have a publishing division as well as the Oak Grove School (pre-K-12 college prep), which empowers students to take responsibility for their own learning and to develop life-long practices of inquiry into how they live their daily lives. Krishnamurti’s former home, Pine Cottage, has become a Study Center and Library for reflection and contemplation.
As you can see, his impact on Ojai has been considerable.
I understand completely why he was so attracted to Ojai and why he stayed here until his death at 90 years of age.
If you’d like to experience the exalted spiritual air of Ojai, be sure to join me for our Hallowed Retreat at the magnificent Ojai Valley Inn at the end of October . There, I’ll be talking in depth about some of Krishnamurti’s key teachings and how we can apply them to our lives today. Hope to see you there!