Rebecca Field, Mentor

Early Background

My birth during the Great Depression was into a wonderful home with parents who were hard working people with tremendous integrity, high ethical standards, and even though neither was really an intellectual, they were active in writer’s groups and often attended theater, ballet, symphony and opera performances, and political lectures at the local university, despite the fact that they were at war with one another. The war they so valiantly fought all their married lives was about religion. Father was the child of a convert to an old form of Western Christianity and Mother was consumed with interest in the teachings of ancient Egypt, Buddhism and teachings of the Far East about spirituality, although to those in her environment she was a mainstream Protestant.

The war my parents engaged in led to enormous confusion on my part. By the age of 13, I could no longer remain in the sect that I was forced to follow, so I simply quit the church. It was a pivotal moment in my life and has profoundly influenced what happened to me later on. Even though it was a freeing experience, it had a downside that that made me fear my parents would abandon me and force me onto the streets to make my way. Thankfully that never happened!

As a teenager some religious experiences occurred and during the same period petit mal seizures started. Fortunately I was a good student and was accepted into the state university. After the first year my grades dropped because of illness. I became so misaligned psychologically and spiritually that my high grade status reversed. I was so emotionally troubled that minor seizures engulfed me. My first real spiritual guru became evident when a woman who was in one of the creative writing groups with my parents took me on as a therapy client. She understood the inner and spiritual side of life and began to teach me how to use positive thinking to overcome deep depression. She saw what a drug prescribed by a physician was doing to me, and over the next year she helped me overcome the drug-ridden state. As I regained my strength and stopped taking medically prescribed drugs, she told me about a spiritually oriented school that might benefit me because through its teachings on meditation, I could eventually answer the life-questions that troubled me. I started studying with the school and studied in it through all its grades or degrees for over forty years. I transferred to another university, graduated and went to Alaska and taught middle school for a year, then took a full year to travel alone around the world. What a fabulous experience!

Middle Years

Shortly after returning to the U.S. from my global jaunt, I married my husband who had a profound religious experience as a beginning graduate student. After our sons were born, he was hired by a big corporation and distinguished himself as a systems programmer. As far as we know, he was the first person in the world to write a systems program enabling computers to inter-communicate. The result was that he touched the lives of almost every human alive. The internet, email and many other things came out of his development of inter-computer communication.

Time spent in Asia profoundly affected me. In Japan I learned meditation and became fascinated with Zen Buddhism. India with its varied belief systems, likewise, inspired me along spiritual lines. Back home in America, I decided to start graduate studies and eventually discovered theosophy which was ground for spiritual openness, practice and curiosity. Many of the classes required reading the sacred texts of the Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Eventually, all the prerequisites for a Ph.D. were met and a doctoral degree was conferred. Much of the psychological work dealt with Psychosynthesis, a practical form of psychology developed after World War II by Italian psychiatrist, Roberto Assagioli. It is a form of psychology that many practitioners in Italy and around the world use in their service to those who seek to know themselves and what contribution they can make to and for others.

During my adult life the question that consumed me was, “Why am I here? What is my mission? What are we here to do? Unfortunately, even though the question was clear, misinterpreting what it meant slowed me down. Because of a lack of emotional maturity, my quest was interpreted as right career rather than as right service to humanity. Nevertheless, I spent 15 years counseling people on the telephone. Reflective listening became a powerful psychological tool to help others. In time we adopted (in heart only) a Tibetan a refugee who came to the U.S. to study. She lived with us for more than seven years and earned her B.S.N degree and R.N. designation in Nursing.

The psychological and spiritual ideas of C.G. Jung fascinated me and were a source of self-study as well as a comfort and solace as my quest continued. However, there seemed to be an unrelenting pressure from within to pursue something that felt right in a larger and global way, something beyond modern Western psychology and its materialistic approaches to human psychological wholeness and wellness. That quest opened the world of business to me and the main thing I learned was the importance of participation, collaboration and cooperation with others in activities, especially in businesses. The work force needs and wants to answer the inner call for right-self-expression at work. At that time, the best understanding of my self-identity was that of a visionary leader still in search of authentic and correct answers to the big questions that hounded me.

The Later Years

The Pachamama Alliance came into focus with its symposium, Awakening the Dreamer. It alerted me to the larger horizons I have always yearned to know more about with its three-fold program pillars: planetary sustainability, social justice and spiritual fulfillment. These were things that really appealed to my heart and included ideas that had been life-long pursuits. Pachamama is a global organization because its symposium presented archetypes and beauty that appealed to people of many cultures and the organization as a whole had answers about sustainability, ecology and social justice and encouraged its members find spiritual fulfillment in meetings with others. There is no dogma and only a small amount of indigenous ritual is honored perhaps as a way to recognize the Earth and its many gifts. Anything foreign, global or international had immense appeal so I became involved with the Santa Cruz Pachamama Group because it met my passions head-on. When signing up to take facilitator training for the symposium it was clearly opening a new world and gave me a chance to meet people with corresponding interests.

Since business also had a certain appeal, I started an online business and wrote articles on my blog, affirmations and books that had a spiritual focus. It was here that much time was spent on learning marketing, a skill which modern society seems to revel in.

At about the same time, an invitation came to join an international group that worked closely with the UN and even suggested paths that the world organization might consider for its programs and global guidelines. Working with the UN and developing advanced ideas for humanity with people around the world has been a rich and rewarding experience.

Graduate training gave me a background in psychology. Philosophically it gave me a background for mentoring which calls me as a servant teacher to humankind. Experience, volunteer work and life itself have given me an extraordinarily rich background which I want to share with those who are also inclined to being leaders and who want to connect and serve in their own special way.

Service to Humanity

Yet the question about just how to serve was still strong and reverberated intensely in some perhaps forsaken part of my being as I saw that many people were shocked as they watched the world as we have known it disintegrate. We are left shaken by too many calamities to mention. We live in the most difficult and challenging period of human history. Think of it! A lot has happened to the human race in the last quarter of a million years. We watch evolution unfold before our eyes and in consciousness we marvel and are amazed at the wonders that reveal creativity, universal compassion and tenacity in times of serious trouble. On the other hand we roll our eyes in terror as we watch man-made horrors like tsunamis play out before us on television and we wonder if we are going to make it as a species and if the earth can bear the thoughtless and greedy assaults that humankind has wrought upon her.

We see our own triumph as our consciousness impels the human race to move ahead, and we find we are one humanity, all connected, interconnected and interdependent and beginning to feel we really need and want each other. We see our brothers and sisters reaching into the cosmos without and the Kosmos within only to find and realize their Oneness with the Divine.

Humanity is in the midst of the process of evolution! People all over the world are deeply involved and committed to do inner work in the laboratory of their own consciousness. We have all been wounded and we are all healing and can heal. To do that we must turn to the spiritual side of our nature and stop shutting it out. We find new ways of knowing now that are beyond the physical senses. That alone is an indication of tremendous and noteworthy growth in consciousness! Joyfully we find we are not alone and we have come to that point of understanding because we have been willing to examine some of our assumptions and release them. We have intensified our sense of identity and realize—even know beyond any shadow of doubt—that we are more than Mary Smith or James White, nor are we what we do for a living—manager of something or director of another thing, but the greater fact is that we know we are soul; I am Soul. ‘I am a spark of the Divine and that is my only identity’ and we move on it as a true leader does, so that that knowledge, in the making for over a quarter of a million years rings out and speaks in some subtle way to others.

We all search for this. We can only take the tests life gives us to recognize and act on our purpose and know beyond doubt that each one of us is but a cell in the greater life of the Divine. We have a specific purpose and it arises within us as we move beyond ego and undertake the role of leadership and greatness wherever we are and whatever we do and know, “Not my will, but thine be done.”

As a true leader you find you are willing to make the necessary sacrifices, to go the extra mile, and that it is good. It is fulfilling and demonstrates as greatness to others.

If you seek to live this way, wholly and authentically, and have doubts about it, please contact me. I am willing to share with you what life has so graciously taught me and beyond that I want to listen to you as you speak your truth and prove to me you know the dynamics of wholeness. In short, you know you are ready.

Rebecca Field, Los Gatos, California, USA
Email: rebecca @ fieldonline.org
Tel and Fax: 408 354-0463