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I Wish I Could Relive My 20's.

I Wish I Could Relive My 20's.

I had just become a born again Christian and had high hopes for my future but quickly lost that faith. What happened to me next was I decided to move on. My intentions were not to isolate myself, but that is what happened next. I thought that putting myself into a University setting, I would be preparing myself for my future and the problems of my lack of a social group and status would be solved.

I had never been the lone ranger type of person, and that year when I attended Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, I had worked at Greenpeace in Toronto that summer, so I had made a lot of friends and connections. However, when I left Toronto and moved to Peterborough those connections were lost, (or so I believed!) Before the school year started, I was sitting in a café and happened to recognize someone I worked with in Toronto. I approached her and said hi, and I think we hung out for the day. It happened that Greenpeace either bought or rented a house there for some door to door canvassing, and some people decided to stay there indefinitely. Looking back, I was grateful that Greenpeace had done this, because I was still young and would have been terribly alone that year in school.

I wasn't really prepared for what happened next. I found myself in a University setting and I was extremely unprepared educationally. Being a mature student, I was ok with the social aspect, but when it came time to write my first essay, I didn't know how. Looking back, it was a big step to apply, be accepted, and move out there, but I didn't even think about applying myself properly to the studies. I got 'out' in enough time that I wasn't forced to complete the first semester or year, and before I left I made sure to say bye bye to my friends from Toronto. Even though I was going back home, I had decided that I was going to spend the rest of my youth in a spiritual way.

Like I said earlier, I had just become a born again Christian, and lost a big chunk of that, but I wasn't going to give up that easily. I still believed that there was a God, and I was going on a quest to find myself. I eventually ended up in Escondido California, most of my friends at the time thought I was crazy, but I had found something again, I had found my 'lost' inner peace. I think I went through trauma when I stopped being a Christian, and I believe now that God was still with me during my rebellious stage. I'm still not sure what to make of my journey through Eastern Meditation and yoga, but this was before everyone was doing it secularly.

I became mixed up spiritually. I believed in Jesus still, like you know "he died on the cross for my sins," but I also believed in Krishna and reincarnation. The path that I was on allowed for this, in fact the teachings I was following taught this. I was a mixture of Christian beliefs and Hindu practice like transcendental meditation. Believe me when I say I found myself. I found myself in a way that made me unrecognizable to my friends and family. I only regret not knowing enough about the bible to see that I was wrong in my choice to incorporate two different religions into my personal Christian belief structure. I now see that truth is not relative, but I'm also 46 not 22 years old.

I guess you can say my regret comes from my lack of life experience but aren't we all young once? Well at least young at heart. Well at least I am! This is Mike.

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