I was raised as a Christian. Over time, I found that organized religion offered very little in the way of spiritual value beyond the initial learning of scripture. At some point, I realized I could read the Bible on my own, free of being told how to think about it. I also realized that two churches, both professed Christian, would take very different views on biblical meaning — and that I should view scripture in the same way my church did. At some point, I began to ask myself what spiritual value could be found in hearing the same biblical passages over and over again. I wanted more than scriptural reading and moral philosophy.

This is when I began my journey of learning how other cultures in our world deal with spiritual endeavors. Reading voraciously, I found what I call the mind sciences — and I wondered why the churches I was brought up in had no comparison. After years of studying spiritual ideas from all over the world, I found that Christianity did have mind sciences — once upon a time. But it had disappeared for most of us over the centuries.

It was while studying Saints that I came to realize that the Christian church did have highly realized spiritual seekers beyond the central figure of the religion. I came to comprehend that many highly evolved spiritual seekers all over the world were saying very similar things. Unfortunately, my church had taught me that their way was the only way, and that all other spiritual paths fell short — especially if they were not biblically based. But luckily, my church had also taught me the “Golden Rule” (Matthew 7:12 & Luke 6:31), and this helped me to bridge the gap and set aside prejudice and bigotry.