We were a family that loved to read. We lived out in the country, about 13 or 14 miles from town, on a farm. And my parents always said, you know, don't expect people to entertain you. So you always took a book with you.
At Christmas time, you know, we didn't have a lot of money. So my parents and my older sister Kathleen would go to a used bookstore. We'd get these books, 10 for a dollar. It was cheaper in those days. And we'd have all these books under the Christmas tree. So in the afternoon, after our big meal, which was kind of breakfast, Mom would make a baked ham, Danish pastries, and this tomato drink she made herself. It was like a Bloody Mary mix but without alcohol.
Then the grandparents would come over, and we'd have breakfast with scrambled eggs. After that, we'd read in the afternoon, take naps, and read again. And at nighttime during dinner, my parents would ask us questions.
We had maps on the walls, so Dad would ask geography questions. Whatever came up in the news, they would ask us about it. My older sister had developed a game called Two, Three. She'd say something like Leonardo da Vinci, and we had to respond with something related like He's an artist and Mona Lisa. If it was Mark Twain, we'd say American writer and Huck Finn.
That's how we learned—it was kind of our home education outside of school.
My parents were really supportive of learning, not so much in grades. They said it was better to be a whole person than to just focus on getting good grades. They would rather have someone well-versed in many things. It was almost like the old-fashioned way, with the seven liberal arts. My grandmother would give our family four tickets to the symphony, and we'd go every month or whenever they had music. Afterward, Dad would take us to this ice cream place where we'd have special five-cent ice cream cones. You could pay a nickel more to have it dipped in chocolate.
There were also these ice cream things on a stick called flying saucers. Since we were in a farming community, all the parents in the area were into making sure their children had a broad view of life. I went to one of those one-room schoolhouses. By the time I went, there were three buildings, but it still had the bell and the steeple, and 1912 on the front—Granville Elementary School. It covered first through eighth grade; my dad went there too.
After that, you were bussed into town for high school, for ninth through twelfth grades, though they eventually had an intermediate middle school. That was how we were brought up with the love of learning, like nurturing our imagination.
We couldn't afford to travel much, so we went up to the mountains and camped.
That's how we got a love of nature, going to Kings Canyon. We borrowed Grandpa's pickup and put a tarp over the back. Some of us slept on sleeping bags underneath—that was our tent. That was our upbringing—love of learning, competitiveness between six kids, but not so much about who knew the most. It was about the love of learning, I guess. I haven't lost that—it's still exciting to learn something new.
When I went to college, I didn't know what I wanted to major in. I ended up majoring in music, but I went in there not knowing, like a kid in a candy shop. I couldn't decide whether I wanted music, theater, history, or English. So I started, but it was hard because when you major in music, you can't hardly take anything else.
There were around 28 units for an English degree, but 40 to 45 units for a music degree. So out of, let's say, 17 units a semester, you were taking 13 of them just in music, leaving little room to explore other areas.
I always wanted to be a singer, and I had this idea in my mind of what my voice sounded like—warm and rich. But when I listened to it on tape, it sounded more like pure sound, like a crystal bowl. It wasn't what I expected, especially for Italian opera, which I loved. But the type of voice I had meant it wouldn't mature until my 40s, and I was only in my 20s. When I started going back for my Master's in voice and doing gigs with kids' groups in dinner theaters, I suddenly felt like it was a dead end. I was interested in other things.
That's when I decided to join the Air Force.
My family couldn't understand why I chose that path, but I felt a call to do something different. I graduated from basic training on the day I turned 28. It was a way to break free from the stuckness I felt in my farming town, where going to a mall meant putting on nylons and makeup. I loved visiting my older sister at Berkeley, where I could dress freely and feel total freedom.
As for flying, I didn't want to learn, but I was always searching for where my power lay and why I didn't feel powerful in certain situations, especially when dealing with men in positions of authority. Joining the service was a way to support myself and explore further schooling to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life. So, I thought about how I'd approach this new role. All the vehicle maintenance folks were very down to earth. Since it wasn't me to yell or act tough, I decided to approach it like I was part of a play because, really, aren't we all part of a spiritual play or mystery?
One morning during coffee, I walked in, took a deep breath, and went into character. I looked at everyone and said, What the f$%k do you guys think you're doing?
All their jaws dropped. I laid out what I'd observed, who was doing what, and who wasn't pulling their weight. It was like disciplining kids, but they were adults. After that, I said, Supervisors upstairs.
As I walked upstairs, I couldn't help but grin at what I'd just done. I was laughing at myself, thinking, Okay, we're doing this. I laid it all out for the supervisors too. It was my first experience with wielding outward power. But internally, a lot was going on. I was scared because I didn't know how to set boundaries or assert my will.
Growing up, I'd seen both strong leadership and abusive power, and I wanted to navigate this new territory differently. I was thirsty for knowledge, attending workshops, and reading extensively. I was particularly conscious of not giving away my power, recognizing when it was mine to wield. Learning about power meant confronting uncomfortable situations, like dealing with men who underestimated or disrespected me. I realized their behavior reflected their own biases, not my worth.
One incident prompted me to devise a phrase to handle such situations gracefully. When invited for coffee by a colleague during a deployment, I declined with a smile, saying, thank you very much, but I'm into quality, not quantity. It was a subtle way of asserting boundaries without causing conflict. I didn't want to build a reputation like that. The big thing was, that just wasn't me.
But every place I went, once I had my spiritual awakening, my golden key episode... Sounds like an episode, like, Oh, she went crazy. But it was. I started whatever I was working on. I did some Violet Flame work and worked on the I Am. So wherever I went in the following years, I went to Ascension Island and I lit the ascension flame on Ascension Island, which is down in the middle of nowhere between Africa and South America. I went in there to inspect our materials handling equipment, I went to Puerto Rico to Roosevelt Roads, I went to Germany, eventually to Korea and Japan, and I would consciously be there and I would light the flame of transformation.
I knew that if my intent and knowingness... because this first comes with intent and that if I could anchor something if I could make truth if I could anchor whatever is a higher truth or symbol that and do it with the knowing that it's anchored, rooted, and it's going to expand, then people will transform the area, people going through it, they'll be activated in order to start doing their own search.
And so I would do things like that wherever I went. And as I learned that became my own practice because I didn't really have any teachers. I love it when people say, This has been my teacher for 20 years, and This is my teacher for a weekend, this is my teacher for one day, two hours, because I got a lot of my training in the Dreamtime.
You know, I had a lot of dreams, I had this inner temple, and I built this inner temple because, you know, you read about, okay thats the body's the temple, Edgar Cayce always talked about the body temple, so what's in the temple? The Temple is the divine. that's where you go to find the divine.
So, therefore, I have this divine spark here.
And I built the temple to house the spark. I would sit there by the flame and I would see a little mini-me take stuff and throw it into the flame like resentment, anger, and see the flame burn because it was transforming. But also then one day I noticed a door there in the back part of my temple, and there was this flame on it. And pretty soon then the next time I saw it there were chairs and what started happening was it was rotating with guides. My guide would come in depending on the color of the chair, I would know who was going to be there and give me a teaching.
And in the dream time, I got these teachings about integrity. Integrity is being true to the core of your soul, being the core of your authentic self is basically what integrity is and being aligned with your soul's purpose. So I downloaded all these thoughts about love, about these different cards. I had a card on authentic self, a card on love, a card on grace, this is the... wheel of transcendence. That's what it became. But it started out as 52 Oracle cards. So I would get downloads about the cards, but they were really about vibrations and that was my journey. I got it all in dream time because I was always on the go. I was always off to another base. I think you learn discernment.
You learn who you can trust, and who you can't to talk about things.
Because the whole thing is to remind people of who they are in truth, you see that and, and, and, and perhaps To give them a focus that they could take away for the day. Okay. So that, so that there, their focus becomes an inner focus. Because there's a whole thing about balance or, or I like to say harmony.
Because you're harmonizing your outside and your inside life. And they shouldn't be separate. Your inside life is how you express through whatever you're doing in your external life. So I go to the grocery store, I am taking who and what I am in truth and I am informing the field. I am a light that carries information.
You see, so the more divine light with that divine information that I can hold, then if someone passes me in the baking aisle, and I'm looking for sugar and they're passing me they're going right through my energy field. And you have a choice you can expand your field or you can say let me bring it close to me. Because sometimes you just want to not be noticed in the crowd. You just want to observe. You know, my husband's very good at being kind, and he's talking so much about being kind. So it's being aware of your thoughts and being aware of your feelings because feelings are such a motivator of your thoughts. You see, it's not that now I'm going to pray, I'm going to talk to God.
It's that who you are is a living prayer.
And so your thoughts and your feelings then become what you're praying or setting an intention for. I had a reading one time and I was told that I needed to be very careful of what I said and what I thought because people would take that as truth, especially because when you start, when you start being the authentic self, you start being real it's very powerful and that's where people can find their power, you know, and women can find their power this is what being authentic is.
Dr Melissa is an ordained Religious Science and Interfaith Minister and member of the Affiliated New Thought Network. Melissa is Emerson Institutes director of education services teaching and developing curricula for Emerson Institute
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