From West 102nd Street to Berkeley
In 1973 I was finishing my first year at Woodstock College, the almost legendary Jesuit Theologate that had recently relocated from its bucolic Maryland campus to rented quarters close to Columbia University. I began my final training for the priesthood after leaving the Graduate School of Design at Harvard without formally finishing my degree.
I was a highly educated and bright young 28 year old Jesuit who’d completed almost 8 years of rigorous religious training on top of an Ivy league education. I was enthusiastic, inquisitive and, to most observers, engaged in my life. I had invested a lot in getting to that point in my life, both in terms of constructing what I thought was a well reasoned personal sense of my world and its purpose as well as building a very tough defense system. I was unhappy and frustrated and, although I tried to hide from it, I knew that I was at a turning point in my life, and looking back, desperately looking for a way out.
I loved the Jesuits and had done well in the rigorous course of study. I was certainly accepted and encouraged by fellow Jesuits and superiors. I didn’t hide what I characterized as struggles with my homoerotic feelings from my superiors, and they tried to help in whatever way they could. Still the prospect of a lifetime of celibacy seemed more and more like a chain rather than a path to fulfillment.
I was living in a large, sprawling apartment at 102nd Street and Riverside Drive with a group of seven other Jesuit scholastics and our mentor, Avery Dulles. By the end of that summer, I would be living in a small rented room close to Peoples’ Park in Berkeley California. A decade after Mario Savio’s Free Speech movement and less than 5 years after a host of hippies had ushered in San Francisco’s Summer of Love, I was a little behind the curve in terms of actually participating in the momentous movements of social change. The Jesuits had tried to instill a very reflective attitude though I was always trying to push those boundaries, but basically I think that I was cautious because of my conservative upbringing as well as my personal quandary about where these movements were going and how they fit into my life.
Late one evening and into the early morning hours, during a rambling conversation with another young Jesuit from Chicago, Bob P. I heard about a Jesuit priest, Bob Ochs, who was working with Claudio Naranjo in Berkeley California. Naranjo had introduced the Enneagram, a nine pointed diagram that described personality types, intended for study and intense self-scrutiny, that led to "real personal liberation." And to give the story the feel of the real stuff of human life, this young bearded Jesuit told a story of this group of men and women, lay and religious, taking off their clothes during the last session as a sign of fearless self-investigation. He assured me that it was not at all sexual. The nuns carefully folded their habits and laid them down almost reverentially.
I was stunned, but I also remember being dazzled by his enthusiasm—something inside me wanted to meet Ochs. It seemed at first glance that he’d managed to link the liberation of psychological work with the spiritual, actually locating its base there. I was not unique among young seminarians of my generation in feeling that conventional religious practice had failed me. Something inside me felt a connection, and I decided right then that I was going to California. Looking back perhaps I was just grabbing at straws in my pain; it might have been a classic “Hail Mary!”
As soon as I woke up, I called my religious superiors in Boston and asked for permission to transfer to the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. I wanted to work with Ochs. After a few questions, they agreed—actually they were enthusiastic—and asked me to call Berkeley and see if I could be admitted. Things fell into place so quickly and smoothly that I felt the Universe, or the Holy Spirit to whom I owed some vague allegiance, was guiding me.
Within 10 days I was sharing a ride across country with a complete stranger, a young kid from Brooklyn who was headed towards the Northwest for forestry school. Once in Berkeley I called Ochs to introduce myself, and then in a completely flat tone (I have no idea why I remember that) he asked, “Why don’t you join the group?” It had never occurred to me, but I’d just driven across the country in a headlong, desperate search to discover something about myself, and I called the number he gave me. Rosalyn Shaffer answered the phone and told me—again her tone was rather flat—to be at an old fraternity house on Hearst Avenue at 7 PM sharp on Tuesday night.
A few weeks later, I joined the odd collection of young therapists, grad students, carpenters, journalists, film makers, bearded bare-foot hippies, waiting at the door. Some were even smoking marijuana before the session. The doors opened and we entered a large thread bare living room, and Claudio just said, “Let’s begin with zazen.” And we sat for close to an hour.
I am including as many details as I can remember because I want to flesh out how different this world was for me. Even though Woodstock College was as experimental as the Jesuits could muster post-Vatican II, and even though I had been a student at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard which was not immune to the counter-cultural forces of the anti-Vietnam, San Francisco Summer of Love ethos, this was remarkably different. I sensed that if I stuck with whatever program was going to be proposed, my life would change in ways that I could not predict. And that certainly I would be confronted and uncomfortable. I chose to stay.
My experience that evening was not just that California presented a cafeteria of spiritual disciplines, but a veritable smorgasbord! By 10:15 we’d sat zazen, been introduced to dantian breathing by Mr. Chu, a Taoist master from Taiwan, and engaged in Gestalt therapy, first Claudio working with one student and then in “dyads.” We were instructed to meditate for at least 30 minutes in the morning, keep a dream journal, meet with a support cohort of three other group members, and return on Thursday night. Tuesdays and Thursdays were shock points in the Sufi tradition, and provided the most opportunity for deep change.
The professional, if unconventional rhythm of the evening sessions, was set. Within a short time it became comfortable and something that I rather looked forward to. Long periods of meditation became easier and I actually did them. I made friends in my small group. The group began to seem less unconventional and more a group of dedicated young people who were intent on discovering something about themselves. And Rosalyn promised that within a week we’d be introduced to Bob Hoffman, who would lead us in a first ever group process of the “Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy.”
My own awakening would wait for the recognition of how much pain I carried inside.
I was a highly educated and bright young 28 year old Jesuit who’d completed almost 8 years of rigorous religious training on top of an Ivy league education. I was enthusiastic, inquisitive and, to most observers, engaged in my life. I had invested a lot in getting to that point in my life, both in terms of constructing what I thought was a well reasoned personal sense of my world and its purpose as well as building a very tough defense system. I was unhappy and frustrated and, although I tried to hide from it, I knew that I was at a turning point in my life, and looking back, desperately looking for a way out.
I loved the Jesuits and had done well in the rigorous course of study. I was certainly accepted and encouraged by fellow Jesuits and superiors. I didn’t hide what I characterized as struggles with my homoerotic feelings from my superiors, and they tried to help in whatever way they could. Still the prospect of a lifetime of celibacy seemed more and more like a chain rather than a path to fulfillment.
I was living in a large, sprawling apartment at 102nd Street and Riverside Drive with a group of seven other Jesuit scholastics and our mentor, Avery Dulles. By the end of that summer, I would be living in a small rented room close to Peoples’ Park in Berkeley California. A decade after Mario Savio’s Free Speech movement and less than 5 years after a host of hippies had ushered in San Francisco’s Summer of Love, I was a little behind the curve in terms of actually participating in the momentous movements of social change. The Jesuits had tried to instill a very reflective attitude though I was always trying to push those boundaries, but basically I think that I was cautious because of my conservative upbringing as well as my personal quandary about where these movements were going and how they fit into my life.
Late one evening and into the early morning hours, during a rambling conversation with another young Jesuit from Chicago, Bob P. I heard about a Jesuit priest, Bob Ochs, who was working with Claudio Naranjo in Berkeley California. Naranjo had introduced the Enneagram, a nine pointed diagram that described personality types, intended for study and intense self-scrutiny, that led to "real personal liberation." And to give the story the feel of the real stuff of human life, this young bearded Jesuit told a story of this group of men and women, lay and religious, taking off their clothes during the last session as a sign of fearless self-investigation. He assured me that it was not at all sexual. The nuns carefully folded their habits and laid them down almost reverentially.
I was stunned, but I also remember being dazzled by his enthusiasm—something inside me wanted to meet Ochs. It seemed at first glance that he’d managed to link the liberation of psychological work with the spiritual, actually locating its base there. I was not unique among young seminarians of my generation in feeling that conventional religious practice had failed me. Something inside me felt a connection, and I decided right then that I was going to California. Looking back perhaps I was just grabbing at straws in my pain; it might have been a classic “Hail Mary!”
As soon as I woke up, I called my religious superiors in Boston and asked for permission to transfer to the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. I wanted to work with Ochs. After a few questions, they agreed—actually they were enthusiastic—and asked me to call Berkeley and see if I could be admitted. Things fell into place so quickly and smoothly that I felt the Universe, or the Holy Spirit to whom I owed some vague allegiance, was guiding me.
Within 10 days I was sharing a ride across country with a complete stranger, a young kid from Brooklyn who was headed towards the Northwest for forestry school. Once in Berkeley I called Ochs to introduce myself, and then in a completely flat tone (I have no idea why I remember that) he asked, “Why don’t you join the group?” It had never occurred to me, but I’d just driven across the country in a headlong, desperate search to discover something about myself, and I called the number he gave me. Rosalyn Shaffer answered the phone and told me—again her tone was rather flat—to be at an old fraternity house on Hearst Avenue at 7 PM sharp on Tuesday night.
A few weeks later, I joined the odd collection of young therapists, grad students, carpenters, journalists, film makers, bearded bare-foot hippies, waiting at the door. Some were even smoking marijuana before the session. The doors opened and we entered a large thread bare living room, and Claudio just said, “Let’s begin with zazen.” And we sat for close to an hour.
I am including as many details as I can remember because I want to flesh out how different this world was for me. Even though Woodstock College was as experimental as the Jesuits could muster post-Vatican II, and even though I had been a student at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard which was not immune to the counter-cultural forces of the anti-Vietnam, San Francisco Summer of Love ethos, this was remarkably different. I sensed that if I stuck with whatever program was going to be proposed, my life would change in ways that I could not predict. And that certainly I would be confronted and uncomfortable. I chose to stay.
My experience that evening was not just that California presented a cafeteria of spiritual disciplines, but a veritable smorgasbord! By 10:15 we’d sat zazen, been introduced to dantian breathing by Mr. Chu, a Taoist master from Taiwan, and engaged in Gestalt therapy, first Claudio working with one student and then in “dyads.” We were instructed to meditate for at least 30 minutes in the morning, keep a dream journal, meet with a support cohort of three other group members, and return on Thursday night. Tuesdays and Thursdays were shock points in the Sufi tradition, and provided the most opportunity for deep change.
The professional, if unconventional rhythm of the evening sessions, was set. Within a short time it became comfortable and something that I rather looked forward to. Long periods of meditation became easier and I actually did them. I made friends in my small group. The group began to seem less unconventional and more a group of dedicated young people who were intent on discovering something about themselves. And Rosalyn promised that within a week we’d be introduced to Bob Hoffman, who would lead us in a first ever group process of the “Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy.”
My own awakening would wait for the recognition of how much pain I carried inside.
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