Introduction
This write-up is an attempt to present my life story, spiritual path, and lessons learned in life, all in one hyper-text story. Links are scattered throughout, so you can choose which sections of the story you might wish to read in more detail. Occasionally there will be links to web sites, or other pages on my homepage. When I first post this, it may be more simple, but I'll be adding on from time to time.

The major phases of my life have been: an innocent childhood, raised by loving, and relatively aware, pacifist parents; four rather uneventful and unsuccessful college years; followed by five years of life with the hippies of the 60's; which led to a generally unstructured life devoted to Avatar of the Age Meher Baba. Since becoming a *Baba Lover* I've lived in Joshua Tree California, Berkeley California, New Mexico, Myrtle Beach South Carolina, and in 1981, moved back to Joshua Tree. During this period I married, had four children, all boys, became a sign painter, got divorced, and became very familiar with the Joshua Tree National Park, that I have lived near now for the last 17 years. As I write this in January, 1999, after a second marriage and divorce, I find myself battling chronic fatigue, and am about to try a Palm Springs Holistic doctor to try to really get a handle on my long fragile health.

Childhood and family background
If you are interested, I have some past-life speculations as well.
My parents were generation gappers themselves, breaking from, especially on my mother's side, a strict Christian upbringing. Ethnically, their backgrounds include English, French, Swiss-German Mennonite, and a tiny bit of Seneca Indian. Since my Father's side of the family has been in the country since 1722, there may well be a bunch of other stuff mixed in there also, although several generations were all Mennonites. I've had fun visiting The Mohler Family Tree on the web, where I can start with my father, James B. Mohler, born 1910, and trace back 8 generations, to where Mohlers first came over to America from Switzerland around 1722.

Anyway, after my parents got married, after finishing college during the depression, they both became Unitarians. In Cleveland Ohio, during WWII, they belonged to a Unitarian Church where the minister preached a pacifist approach even to ending the tyranny of Hitler. Our family always had ties to various Quakers also, and I met friends of theirs who sat out WWII in jail for refusing to serve in the US Army. I strongly suspect that I was given such a birth after particularly revolting experiences as a soldier or prisoner (probably best not to remember!) during WWII.

My folks also seems to have some connection to India, because, although they ridiculed beliefs in miracles recorded in the Christian Bible, they told me that there was a saint living in India, Mahatmas Ghandi. One of my earliest memories is listening on the radio to reports of Ghandi's fasting, during the partition of India. Anyway, I had a rather quiet and uneventful childhood, living first in Cleveland Ohio, and soon after in New Castle Pennsylvania, and later in the suburbs of Spokane and Seattle Washington. My father worked as a metallurgical engineer, and my mother mostly was a stay-at-home mom, although she did a brief period of teaching mentally disadvantaged children. I have an older brother Lee, who became a math professor, and a younger brother Todd, who died tragically young.

College, NYC, and San Francisco
After graduating from High School, I decided my mission in life was to spread the message of nuclear disarmament and world peace, and enrolled as a journalism major at the University of Washington. However, I soon discovered that almost no one else in the journalism department was much interested in anything beyond sports and rather shallow daily news items. Soon I entered a long period of low ambition and just doing enough to stay in school and hoping the somehow my place in the world would become clear in time. It certainly wasn't then. One aspect of journalism did stick with me however, and that was photography. I still have a few black & white photographs that I took at that time, developed in my own darkroom, and now I enjoy now taking photos up in the Joshua Tree National Park. Also, ambition for writing has certainly not left me, as I am currently working on my first novel.

After two years of journalism schooling, and on the verge of flunking out of the University, I quit school, worked for a railroad briefly, and made a one month visit to New York City, and the nearby Worlds Fair. I had thoughts of somehow starting a photography career in NYC, after some technical training. Two things discouraged me however: one; virtually everyone I mentioned my plans to told me that NYC is a very rough place to live, and that it might well destroy a young innocent like me, and two: one morning while walking the streets of Greenwich Village (surely one of the world's hippest places!) someone who had lived there twenty years told me that I had the longest hair he had ever seen on a guy! (1964, things sure were about to change! My hair probably didn't reach my shoulders. Three years later it would be half way down my back) I decided NYC was just not the place for me, and soon came up with an alternative plan, and, with my parent's and grandmother's funding, entered an art college in San Francisco North Beach area, majoring in photography.

For two years I was able to take all the photographs I wanted to, and walk and take buses through the many and varied neighborhoods of unique and diverse San Francisco. My teachers were hip and extremely liberal, and my fellow art students vastly more interesting than the journalism majors of UW. What career all this might lead to was extremely nebulous, but I was having a lot of fun (and keeping my student deferment from the draft that sent people to Vietnam). I was drawn to the political activism of the time, marching with the United Farm workers, the civil rights movement, and later, anti-war protesters. I was involved enough in the Congress of Racial Equality to be an organizer going door to door in the Fillmore District, trying to get people to come to CORE meetings.

At first in SF I rented a room in the beautiful, and very racially integrated neighborhood, Bernal Heights, and later moved to the virtually all black and very slumy neighborhood South of Market, on South Park (now the leading edge *Multimedia Gulch!*). When the college money ran out, I took a job in a darkroom, and just enjoyed living in the City. I was into Black culture at the time, and got to see of some of the greats of the period, such as Otis Reading, James Brown, The Surpremes, Ike and Tina Turner, jazzman Charlie Mingus, and Chicago bluesmen Muddy Waters and Junior Wells. I missed getting to see The Who smash guitars at the Monterry Pop Festival, because I was working weekends, and other people beat me to arranging to take time off to go. I took in Ken Kesey's *Acid Tests* held at North Beach's Longshoreman's Hall.

Of course, I became a Hippy
I mean, this was San Francisco in the sixtys, and I was already growing my hair long anyway (I think I had one hair cut in the next five years, just before trying to cross the Mexican border with very little money). I don't really have regrets in life, but it sure would have been nice if somehow I had some how managed to keep on taking pictures! Oh well, I read recently about a woman who did, and knew many of the rock stars of that time as well, and published a book, *Flashing on the Sixties.*

I met, or at least saw on stage, many of the icons of that era, including Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsburg, Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Janus Joplin, and virtually all of the many rock bands that came out of sixty's San Francisco. Once I went to a small gathering of people and listened to one of the founders of Macrobiotics. I slept on roof tops, and spent my days wandering the streets, blending in with the many colorful and varied characters on Haight Street, and relaxing and meeting people on *hippy hill* in Golden Gate Park. I spent a great deal of time playing home-made bamboo flutes. Three times in winters I traveled to Mexico, and when the City got to be too much for me, I hitch-hiked the many highways of California and camped in idyllic surroundings near the tree line on Mount Shasta. I spent weeks at a time along huge rivers in the Sierra foothills. Once, while visiting friends in Santa Cruz, I got to take in two talks by J. Krishnamurti. In 1969 I followed the sun south to Joshua Tree and joined a hippy commune for a while, beginning a love affair with this area I lived in for 19 years, right up until Y2K and slightly beyond . I began to notice that there is such a thing as synchonisity, although I never heard the word until years later. Someday I plan to write up my advenures in the sixties in book length form, as there certainly is a lot of stories to tell there.

All this somehow leads to Meher Baba, Avatar of the Age
As I began to back away from psychedelic drugs, realizing that they were leading me into confusion and silliness instead of any kind of true inner knowledge, I adopted a Eastern pattern of spirituality of wandering and reading the Bagavad Gita (Hindu Bible) over and over. Earlier I had heard Avatar Meher Baba mentioned here and there, and his claims to be *Rama, Krishna, this one, that one* and when, in the winter of 1970-71, I ran across His three volume Discourses in a metaphysical bookstore in Yuma Arizona, I set out to read them and decide for myself the truth of His claims. In no time I was completely fascinated, and amazed at how Meher Baba's words utterly meshed with the teachings of the Bagavad Gita that I was so absorbed into, and at the same time greatly expanded and updated those ancient teachings. After spending several weeks reading and contemplating those discourses, I was wholly convinced that Meher Baba was the one Avatar returned, even though I knew almost nothing about the His life, except what was written in the *Discourses* one-page introduction.

I latched onto what Baba said about not seeking after material things, and continued my carefree wanderings, hitch-hiking through Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and back through Utah and Nevada when it got to be Spring, and returned to camp for another summer on Mt. Shasta. There someone who had a friend who had gone to India loaned me book after book about Meher Baba, and I struggled with and also greatly enjoyed deepening my experience of the Avatar by learning details of His life for the first time. After about another year of traveling around California, mostly camping near friends in Joshua Tree and the low Sierras, and temporarily taking up with an old girlfriend again, who also became interested in Meher Baba, I eventually made the hardest move of my life: I left Joshua Tree to live near the Meher Baba group in Berkeley California.

I lived in Berkeley for two years and nine months from 1973 into 1976, and quickly confirmed what I had already suspected: that contact with other followers of Meher Baba, and with those who had met Baba and been under His direct orders, was far more valuable to me than any steps toward spiritual growth I was able to manage on my own. I began the long process (which I am still working on) of integrating myself into the dominant society around me, and finding opportunities of serving God in others. I've learned, and am still trying to truly realize and put into action, that service to others is largely a matter of maintaining a positive, honest, and cheerful attitude that helps spread happiness to all we meet. After time and time again failing to achieve this ideal, I have learned over and over that returning to plunge ever deeper into the ways of God as presented by Meher Baba's life and teachings is the surest path there is to finding lasting happiness. Not that I've achieved this, but at least I've firmly spotted the goal and the direction.

In Berkeley, at first I continued a craft that I had taken up in Joshua Tree, and wove and sold yarn mandalas of a very ancient design, known then as *God's Eyes* or *Ojos de Dios.* I managed an amazingly consistent income, sitting on Telegraph Avenue wrapping and slowly expanding patterns of yarn on crossed sticks, and selling two or three *ojos* a day to passerbys. Many other vendors were doing similar things, with pottery, macrame, leather goods, paintings, and many many other arts and crafts. I also set out pictures and pamphlets of Meher Baba, and began destroying my health by breathing way too much exhaust fumes from the busy city street immediately to my back. For a time I also worked in a large and well run Natural Foods store, Wholly Foods.

The active and organized Berkeley Meher Baba group at that time consisted of perhaps one hundred people, and I got to meet several visitors from India who had devoted their lives to Baba, as well as many Baba Lovers who lived at that time in the Bay Area who had been under Baba's orders and *Nazar* (protective eye) before Meher Baba had *dropped the body* just a few years before, in 1969. However, by 1976, after a cross-country bus trip to Baba's *Home in the West* in Myrtle Beach South Carolina, I realized that I was not able to continue the stresses and exhaust fumes of Berkeley. Also I had fallen in love with a young woman during a quick trip back to Mt. Shasta, and I didn't see any way of making a life for the two of us in a city environment. So, on with the next phase of life: Marriage and New Mexico.

I moved to a rural area north of Albuquerque, near to where Baba Lovers Clive and Terry Adams lived, and continued to make my *ojos* which I now sold to various stores designed to lure part of the vast tourist economy that constantly flows through the *Land of Enchantment.* Soon I was writing love letters to Jan who I had spent only a few days with in Berkeley, after meeting her at Mt. Shasta, and before long we were married and Abel, the first of our eventual four boys we had together, was born in Sept. 1977. I took up driving school busses for added income, and Jan helped out with the ojos. We worked for a local natural foods co-op for a discount on our foods, and I got healthy with the help of a homeopathic healer/chiropractor and a lot of exercise riding my bicycle. At one point we almost moved to Sante Fe, and at another time I almost took over managing a very rural trading post, but for the most part we kept plugging along with the ojos and me driving school bus. We managed to travel around and see quite a bit of truly *enchanting* New Mexico.

Soon after we got married, Jan had a series of dreams about Meher Baba and decided the devotional feelings she had for Him were from her own karma and experience, and not just rubbed off from my enthusiasm. Later when she dropped following and believing in Baba as the Avatar, I believe she looked at this differently, but during this period of mutual dedication to Meher Baba, we picked up and drove in a station wagon that my parents had given me (my first car) and moved to Myrtle Beach South Carolina. With the wagon piled high with our worldly possessions, we journeyed to Baba's *Home in the West,* the large and active spiritual center founded by Meher Baba himself during His visits to the West in the early 1950's. There I got to meet many more people who had dedicated their lives to Baba, including quite a few who had spent time with Baba either in Myrtle Beach or India.

At first in Mrytle Beach I worked for a small operation silk screening T shirts for the tourists. When that business folded, I worked long hours for a time on a road crew building the Mrytle Beach by-pass, and then got a job for a billboard company as a signpainter's helper, beginning my sign painting career that I still follow today. I was determined to find a way to be self-employed, and at the same time do something at least somewhat artistic, and signpainting seemed very appealing. It was hard work, but I was in good health then, and enjoyed breaking my fear of heights by working up in the air day after day. The painter that I was assigned to as helper was a proud and loud black man who raised his three kids to be college educated and successful, and I learned many lessons from this man who struggled to overcome the disadvantages of being born black in the South. He had also lived in the North, and Europe, and had burned out as a soldier in Vietnam, so he had plenty to talk about during our year we spent together slopping paint on huge billboards. Strangely his name was also Jay, and he became a huge part of my *southern experience.* Another character from the billboard company introduced me to square dancing, and Jan and I had a lot of fun taking lessons and dancing with a local square dance group in North Mrytle Beach. I think those days were the best of our marriage, and I highly recommend square dancing to any couple who wants a fun and wholesome activity to enjoy together, especially if you happen to live in the South, where square dancing is taken up by all ages with much joy and enthusiasm.

Second son Daniel was born during our two years and nine months in Myrtle Beach, and Jan took up working at a video arcade evenings while I watched the kids. This part of our life together was stressful, as we got into different sleep cycles with me going to work early in the morning, while her job went on into the late evening. Also Jan dropped believing in Meher Baba during this time, and began agitating for a move back to California. We almost split up during this period, but in the end decided to take separate trips back to the West Coast, and re-unite there, moving to a nice rural area in northern or central California. As things worked out we moved to Joshua Tree, with its cheaper rents and mild winter climate.

Fall of1981 was a good time to take up sign painting in Joshua Tree and the surrounding Morongo Basin, because as it turned out, two older sign painters had recently retired. Quite quickly I was able to find work painting real estate signs, store front signs, and other little misc. projects. For the first year or so I spent about a third of my time driving around looking for signs that needed repainted, or going to shops and real estate offices, and slowly worked up to working full time filling sign orders that came in over the phone. After a few months we managed to move to a really spectacular location up against huge rocks and boulders, with miles of open desert that led into the National Park just behind us. Kevin was born in that house in January of 1983, and when Jan became pregnant for the fourth time in 1984 we decided we needed something bigger, and moved to a three bedroom house in north Joshua Tree near old friends Al and Ann Murdy. In March 1985 Corey came speedily out of the womb, such that the mid-wife didn't make it for the birth, and for the first time I got to catch one of my kids myself.

Anybody who has had four kids born within eight years can tell you that things can get pretty stressful at times. Jan and I had long had our differences anyway, but the years from 1986 to 1988, when we finally divorced, were easily the hardest of my life. However I am happy to say, that after divorcing, Jan and I have dealt with the problems of support and living arrangement of the kids with virtually no arguments whatsoever. Really, for us, divorce was like a curtain falling, and the stress and arguments came to an end. Jan got things together to go to nursing school and now is an RN, and I learned to make signs with a computer and vinyl cutter, bringing my sign business into the computer age.

And recently I learned how to make web-sites!

Annnnnnnd.........(added March 2000)...........now I have moved BACK to Myrtle Beach to once again be near the Meher Spiritual Center and the whole comunity of devotees living nearby.

Annnnnnnnnnd (added Nov. 2002) now I am married and living in Wilmington NC, trying to finish up that first novel, and again making Ojos de Dios, this time to sell via a web-site. If you really want more, check out my updates page.

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