I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later.
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
But… if everything has already happened, then it follows that I am powerless to change my future. Is this predestination?
No! Don’t buy into that! That is not true. In fact, this “set up” should serve you, not disserve you!
You are always at a place of free will and total choice. Being able to see into the “future” (or get others to do it for you) should enhance your ability to live the life you want, not limit it.
How? I need help here.
If you “see” a future event or experience you do not like, don’t choose it! Choose again! Select another! Change or alter your behavior so as to avoid the undesired outcome.
But how can I avoid that which has already happened?
It has not happened to you — yet! You are at a place in the Space-Time Continuum where you are not consciously aware of the occurrence. You do not “know” it has “happened.” You have not “remembered” your future!
(This forgetfulness is the secret of all time. It is what makes it possible for you to “play” the great game of life!)
What you do not “know” is not “so.” Since “you” do not “remember” your future, it has not “happened” to “you” yet! A thing “happens” only when it is “experienced.” A thing is “experienced” only when it is “known.”
Now let’s say you’ve been blessed with a brief glimpse, a split-second “knowing,” of your “future.” What’s happened is that your Spirit — the nonphysical part of you — has simply sped to another place on the Space-Time Continuum and brought back some residual energy — some images or impressions — of that moment or event.
These you can “feel” — or sometimes another who has developed a metaphysical gift can “feel” or “see” these images and energies that are swirling about you.
If you don’t like what you “sense” about your “future,” step away from that! Just step away from it! In that instant you change your experience — and everyone of You breathes a sigh of relief!
Wait a minute! Whoaaaa—?
You must know — you are now ready to be told — that you exist at every level of the Space-Time Continuum simultaneously.
That is, your soul Always Was, Always Is, and Always Will Be — world without end — amen.
I “exist” more places than one?
Of course! You exist everywhere — and at all times!
There is a “me” in the future and a “me” in the past?
Well, “future” and “past” do not exist, as we’ve just taken pains to understand — but, using those words as you have been using them, yes.
There is more than one of me?
There is only one of you, but you are much larger than you think!
So when the “me” that exists “now” changes something he doesn’t like about his “future,” the “me” that exists in the “future” no longer has that as part of his experience?
Essentially yes. The whole mosaic changes. But he never loses the experience he’s given himself. He’s just relieved and happy that “you” don’t have to go through that.
But the “me” in the “past” has yet to “experience” this, so he walks right into it?
In a sense, yes. But, of course, “you” can help “him.”
I can?
Sure. First, by changing what the “you” in front of you experienced, the “you” behind you may never have to experience it! It is by this device that your soul evolves.
In the same way, the future “you” got help from his own future self, thus helping you avoid what he did not.
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You are using all of Life — all of many lives — to be and decide Who You Really Are; to choose and to create Who You Really Are; to experience and to fulfill your current idea about yourself.
You are in an Eternal Moment of Self creation and Self fulfillment through the process of Self expression. You have drawn the people, events, and circumstances of your life to you as tools with which to fashion the Grandest Version of the Greatest Vision you ever had about yourself. This process of creation and recreation is ongoing, never ending, and multi-layered. It is all happening “right now” and on many levels.
In your linear reality you see the experience as one of Past, Present, and Future. You imagine yourself to have one life, or perhaps many, but surely only one at a time.
But what if there were no “time”? Then you’d be having all your “lives” at once!
You are!
You are living this life, your presently realized life, in your Past, your Present, your Future, all at once! Have you ever had a “strange foreboding” about some future event — so powerful that it made you turn away from it?
In your language you call that premonition. From My viewpoint it is simply an awareness you suddenly have of something you’ve just experienced in your “future.”
Your “future you” is saying, “Hey, this was no fun. Don’t do this!”
You are also living other lives — what you call “past lives” — right now as well — although you experience them as having been in your “past” (if you experience them at all), and that is just as well. It would be very difficult for you to play this wonderful game of life if you had full awareness of what is going on. Even this description offered here cannot give you that. If it did, the “game” would be over! The Process depends on the Process being complete, as it is—including your lack of total awareness at this stage.
So bless the Process, and accept it as the greatest gift of the Kindest Creator. Embrace the Process, and move through it with peace and wisdom and joy. Use the Process, and transform it from something you endure to something you engage as a tool in the creation of the most magnificent experience of All Time: the fulfillment of your Divine Self.