Meditations and Awakening
The '90s Internet
When my awakening began in the spring and summer of 1998, the internet was already part of our world — but nothing like it is today. We had web rings, loosely connected sites, and message boards filled with spiritual speculation and half-built ideas. There were no clear leaders or platforms — just scattered pages managed by no one in particular. But that's how we navigated back then.
I remember using a dial-up modem from the Marine House in Lisbon, slowly pulling up English-language New Age websites rather than relying on the local bookstore. While English reading material was relatively easy to come by in many places overseas, most of the texts available in Portugal at the time were in the native language. And though Portuguese is beautiful in its own right, I wasn't yet fluent enough to dive into esoteric texts in anything but English.
Language, I would come to appreciate, is a living art. I grew to admire those who could move between multiple tongues with ease — especially the Foreign Service Officers we worked alongside. Many of them spoke three, four, or even more languages fluently. These FSOs, along with Defense Attaché staff, carried long lists of academic achievements behind their names — linguists, scholars, cultural experts.
To them, we were just the Marines on Post #1 — the eyes and ears of Diplomatic Security. But to us, they represented something aspirational. Most of us were young, with plans to leave active duty and eventually pursue undergraduate studies of our own. For some of us, that meant shifting from tactics to philosophy. From the outside world to the inner one.
My awakening with Peter wasn't a single, shining moment. It was incremental — a series of small, quiet steps that pulled me deeper into awareness. His presence lingered long after the first vision. He returned often, guiding me with impressions, dreams, and a subtle sense of being watched over.
I began to see that what I had experienced wasn't just a psychic flash — it was the beginning of an unfolding. Each day brought a new layer of awareness. A new question. A new message. And with that came the growing recognition of my own role in this journey — that I was not just witnessing something sacred, I was being called to participate in it.
I wasn't career-oriented at the time. I had achieved what I set out to do in the military. And yet, I felt a growing urgency — a need to get out, and to get out in one piece. The threats coming from the Arabian Peninsula were very real. For the first time, I was staring directly into the face of terror — not the kind imagined in drills or movies, but in the form of radical Islam, felt and confronted on a daily basis.
It shook something loose in me.
And it made the stillness that followed all the more powerful.
Security Details with the Secretary of State
One of the great advantages of being a Marine posted to a European embassy is the constant exposure to diverse cultures, history, and ideas. Whether through fine arts, local cuisine, day trips, or historical sites, you're always learning something — if you're open to it.
Another occasional perk of the job was being assigned to a security detail for visiting dignitaries — a Secretary of State or even a Presidential visit. For enlisted Marines, these assignments usually lasted just a few days and were intended to support the Diplomatic Security Service and Secret Service details already in place.
These hotel security posts weren't glamorous. The highlight of a shift might be escorting a cleaning crew into a secure living space or coordinating with the Regional Security Office and the host nation's detachment. Sometimes we just stood watch in hallways, observing Department of State comms guys squabble over bandwidth or logistics.
But the downtime was our own. As long as we showed up on time and ready to go, we were free to explore the cities we were posted in.
It was during one such assignment — a three-day security detail in London — that something shifted. Wandering near Piccadilly Circus, I stumbled into a small, mystical New Age store tucked between shops and cafés.
Finally — something in English!
It was my first visit to a metaphysical store since leaving the States, and I was immediately overwhelmed — in the best way. The narrow aisles were packed with books and tools: angels, psychic mediums, channeling, past life experiences, crystals, drums. Incense hung in the air. Every shelf held something that felt like a piece of the puzzle I'd been searching for.
That day, I began my first crystal collection. I picked up a small amethyst, said to enhance the third eye, and a nearly clear piece of citrine that felt like it had a voice of its own. Each stone seemed to call something out of me — something I was just beginning to listen to.
This was also the day I bought my first meditation CD — a guided experience promising to induce trance and altered states of consciousness. It felt like initiation. I had the tools now:
A crystal? ✅
Music? ✅
All that was left was to learn how to go inward — to sit still between shifts, and begin listening to what this new awareness wanted to show me.
The Blue-Skinned Elephant God
The thing about using a meditation CD, especially when you haven't had formal guidance, is that you really don't know what you're doing right — or wrong — for the entire experience. Some guided meditations have cues or intervals to help the listener along, but without a teacher, it's just you and whoever created the recording. In this case, the CD I picked up in London felt like the most significant spiritual investment I had made in my life up to that point. I remember being struck by the psychedelic artwork on the cover, and by the sheer idea that I might be able to enter a trance.
Lying on the bed of my hotel room, I decided to take a more traditional — or perhaps primal — approach: I meditated nude. I can't say exactly why, but it made sense at the time. There was something about being unclothed, unguarded, and connected to nature — even in the middle of a hotel room. And since I wasn't sharing the room, there was no one to hide from, no external gaze to navigate. If there's one thing the Marine Corps teaches you, it's how to be comfortable with others — and equally comfortable when you're alone. This was the latter.
I laid the crystals out — one on my sternum, the other, the amethyst, held loosely in my hand. I closed my eyes and pressed play.
The sound began slowly — a low, mellow bass pulsing beneath a growing frequency. The trance rhythm emerged. Within minutes, the eyes I had once seen in Peter's first vision returned — opening again, warm and steady, inside the darkness of my brow. I stayed with them for a while. But soon, those eyes shifted into serpent eyes, sliding silently into deeper shadows.
The experience became vivid, colorful, alive. The sound pulsed with light. Then, the music fell away. And in that silence, I felt it: the moment where you are no longer just you — when you are carried away by energies beyond your understanding. That's when he appeared.
The blue-skinned elephant god.
He didn't speak. He didn't need to. His torso and face illuminated themselves against the void — unmistakable, unmistakably there. He held space with me, and I with him. That was enough. His presence during that first meditation left a mark that has never left me.
Some time later, the music ended. I opened my eyes to a now-darkened room. One crystal was still resting on my chest. The amethyst had slipped from my hand.
And then I noticed something else.
Without any physical touch, without stimulation of any kind, I had experienced a full-body orgasm during the meditation — a release that surprised me, yet felt completely natural, even sacred. I reached down, stunned but calm, trying to make sense of what had just occurred.
Meeting Ganesh — the blue-skinned elephant god — in that moment of stillness, openness, and surrender, was more than a vision. It was an initiation. And in the aftermath of that energetic climax, I knew:
There's something real here.
And I had only just begun to find it.