Photo by Marco Carmona

My Real Memoir

I was a romanticist who was disappointed in romance, an idealist who was disappointed in his ideals. I’d once seen a hippy-ish movie about Francis of Assisi, and thought about him now. Like Francis, I longed to find that missing something. I was awash in emotions and ideas with nothing big enough to contain them.

My transitional bestie Carla and I were hungry for a flavor that probably didn’t even exist. Still, she’d heard about something, undoubtedly eastern, likely Hindu, called Self-Realization Fellowship, SRF, and we decided to check it out. After all, we’d come of age with rock stars meditating in India, and concluded that all real profundity emanated from the east.

And so, the following Sunday we attended a church-like SRF service in Fullerton, near where I’d grown up. It was intentionally American, with its affable greeting and simplistic hymns. The sermon was enjoyable, but familiar, nothing I hadn’t heard before. There was no sense of the transcendent. Carla’s summed it up with, “And…?

Nevertheless, still hoping to find that missing something, we each bought a copy of their revered text, Autobiography of a Yogi. Its author, SRF-founder Paramahansa Yogananda had been commissioned to introduce Hinduism to the left half of the world. Recognizing Jesus’ significance in the west, Sri Yogananda had recast him as a self-realization guru. Thus, Jesus was one of the six great yogis enshrined on the Fullerton temple’s altar (the only one not from India).

In his book, Yogananda emphasized how various Hindu saints were like Jesus. One, for example, demonstrated compassion by allowing people to crawl into his hut and sniff his lotus-scented palms. Which, Yogananda implied, was analogous to Jesus healing people and raising them from the dead. Um, not really, I thought after each underwhelming example.

Yogananda was amiable, but two-thirds of the way through, I abandoned his Autobiography. And yet, rather ironically, I’m indebted to him for introducing me to Jesus. I wanted to read everything Jesus had said. So I drove to a remote bookstore where no one I knew would see me, and bought a collection of all his sayings.

Still hungry for that flavor that didn’t exist, I decided to change everything else about my life as well. I loved our nearby tourist mecca Balboa Island, but couldn’t afford to live there. Or could I? In late August, I found a wonderful old Spanish Mission-style house two blocks from the ferry. Once the summer tourists left, I learned, prices plummeted. Hence, they offered cheap off-season rentals to college students.

Why not be both? I rented the house, found two willing roomies, and did an 11^th hour audition for the University of California Irvine’s graduate Drama program. They said yes! Not only that, but a quicky financial-aid package covered all of my bills—even my rent. Without needing an income, I could keep running my little shoestring arts academy on the side.

Two weeks before college began, I climbed out the window of my little corner room onto our terracotta-tiled roof, and opened my Sayings of Jesus book. Lacking context, I missed a lot. Nonetheless, I sensed something truly transcendent in his words. I felt peaceful just reading them.

Embarrassed, assuming Carla would find me shallow and naive, I confessed that I’d lost interest in Hinduism, and felt oddly drawn to Jesus’ teachings instead. “Me too,” she whispered. We agreed that this…

Would be our little secret.

My Real Memoir is a series. To read the next one, click here.