by Robert Broughton

Table of contents

#16 – Living in the Heart

While returning from Burma, the narrator comes across the book Enlightenment Is a Secret published in 1991 by Andrew Cohen. He contacts Andrew Cohen's organization in California and is invited to their place. He travels to California and stays at a bed and breakfast. But he is soon put off by the way the people around Cohen behave towards him.

By chance he hears about a New Age spiritual commune in Northern California called Harbin Hot Springs. He goes there to live and work for room and board in the retreat and healing center. At the commune he finds a way to live "in the heart instead of in the head" and fully integrates into the community for a stretch of time. There he experiences a life with "nowhere to run, nowhere to hide." It is "a great crucible for divine alchemy."

Back to table of contents