The second section of this, the second year of The Many Lives of Journeyman Paul, is intended to expound upon some of the key 'teachers' that I've been privileged to have attracted into my life--people, real and fictional, who have made a difference in my life as Drew Fisher. As I intend to help you understand, I consider a 'teacher' to be any one, any thing, any event, any character from a book or movie that has helped an individual discover and redefine himself. Thus, I'm going to open this section of my blog with a childhood neighborhood playmate who proceeded to appear intermittently in my life over the course of 40 years, James Reed Champion. The First.
Jamie and I met while in grade school. We walked the same route to and from school. That's how we met. We were neighbors, we were the same age, and we attended the same elementary school though we were in different classrooms. Jamie was the youngest child of a family in which several of his brothers and sisters were beyond high school--some even beyond college. (His eldest brother, Rick, was a professional tennis teacher in Scottsdale, Arizona where he founded "yoga tennis" in the early 1970s. Rick was in his thirties when I was a pre-teen.) I think Jamie benefitted from both the hippie wisdom and experimental experiences of his older siblings as well as from the hands-off laissez-faire parenting style of his mother, Kay. Kay Champion was a full-time working mother who had lost her husband, Jamie's father, when Jamie was four years old.
Jamie was a wild, highly extroverted, and uninhibited child. He was not, however, a "trouble maker" or a bad kid. He knew how to pursue his joy without disturbing others. (As a kindergartener he "terrorized" all the girls--much to their delight--by chasing them around the playground trying to kiss them.) I benefitted tremendously from Jamie's example. Though I was quite strong in my own core disposition--and always have been--Jamie was the first human to help me see how open and extroverted we humans could be--that is, how fearless we can be. Looking back, I can see that I needed this influence in my life in order to break free from my conservative, fear-filled, eldest son psychosis. I was a qunitessential "wall flower," quite content to watch--and quite astute observer I was--but I was also quite afraid to act, to attract attention. I quite preferred to feel invisible.
Jamie was the opposite. He was truly fearless and expressed his fearlessness openly and confidently. Though I never experimented with the extremes that Jamie demonstrated and offered (though he never pressured me)--such as sexual and drug and alcohol experimentation--I also never felt drawn to the spell of theater and public speaking. It was when he began participating in community and school theater that our paths truly diverged. Instead, I became attracted to the use of athletics for the development and expression of my joy in being in a human bodymind. Jamie was a competent student, a good athlete, and a well-behaved kid in school. But out in the world he was BIG. He could take over a party or a stage. He was fearless.
In the second round of our relationship we reconnected during college. Jamie was the first person to expose me to principles of human biomagnetic energy. He also was the first person to help me realize that there was a science behind natural food choices. I was such an eager student of his information on Polarity Therapy and raw and natural food. It was as if I had been starving for all of my life for this information! Jamie opened the door for me to begin gathering tools and information with which to empower my self-care; he made me aware that there were alternatives to those choices to which I had been accustomed--to my life's conditioning. And, boy, was I ready for it! I soaked up the lessons of our brief interaction in our 21st years. Many of the techniques and principles Jamie taught me I still use today and have passed on to others enthusiastically.
The third round of our relationship was prompted by a group meditation in which the meditation leader asked us, while in altered consciousness state of meditation, to call forth our "Teacher"--that one individual who has been or is our "teacher." I had no clue who this could or would be. I had never even considered the question before. But, lo! and behold! Who did my Mind conjure up but Jamie Champion--dressed in Sikh turban as his Yoga Tennis brother used to wear. Once I got beyond the shock of the apparition of Jamie Champion as my 'spiritual teacher' it all became perfectly clear. It made so much sense that Jamie was My Teacher. I could see that it was his example, his innate wisdom as well as his esoteric learning that had so profoundly affected me--that had literally shattered "the box" of my robotic conditioning, opened the door to all information. The effect of his presence in my life had literally opened my being up to the infinite possibilities of growth and transformation. Jamie Champion had provided me with the mirror of what was possible--and the knowledge that those possibilities were okay--maybe even healthier that the beliefs and values I had unconsciously accepted due to my upbringing.
Jamie has since gone on to quite a prominent and successful career in the field of alternative health care--specifically in the energetic and dietary healing arts. While our current relationship is virtually nonexistent, his messages, the lessons he made available to me, remain as vivid, vibrant and active to me today--in almost every waking day--as they did all those years ago--maybe moreso now (since I am much better able to understand them today).
This fact is illustrative of two other principles that the Jamie figure helped me to realize. One is that teachers are never meant to be singular or life-long. One can, of course, use a teacher and his/her wisdom, knowledge, information, and inspiration over the course of one's entire lifetime, but it is not necessary. The only true teacher we need is our Selves. In fact, the discovery of this fact is sign of a critical stage of spiritual development: the realization that all you need to know resides within you; that the illusory "others" "outside" you have been co-created and attracted into your consciousness as means to bring information as reminders of your own power, your own self-sufficiency, of your own Wisdom.
The other principle that Jamie's presence in my life helped me to realize is that a teacher can have a tremendous impact even if only in the course of a single encounter--like the sharing of a single look or a single sentence--and that, therefore, they can still earn the title "teacher" despite the student never being a devotee or active seeker of wisdom from that person. I never thought of Jamie as a "teacher" while he was in my life. It was only years later, in retrospect, that I realized that he had been my teacher.
As one "climbs the ladder" of spiritual development one does come to a stage in which the major lessons include: a) one teacher, one faith, one belief system, one construct is not necessarily the container or deliverer of all Truth and Wisdom; b) everyone and everything is (potentially) a teacher; c) all you need to know, all you need for Self-realization, all you require for Eternal Wholeness and Eternal Life is within You, and; d) every thing, everyone, every thought, every action is not only a teacher but also a true reflection of that which your Soul/Higher Self is looking for at this moment for its next stimulus for growth, expansion, increased Self-awareness, augmented Self-concept, and Self-realization. I believe that I asked for Jamie Champion to appear in my world in order that I might have a reminder of my own inner strength, courage, and intuition--as a reminder of The Voice Within. Thank you, Jamie.
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