I heard my first Sanskrit mantra chant in 1969 at age 16 when Swami Satchidananda (www.swamisatchidananda.org) opened the famous Woodstock music festival with a Hari Om chant. Having arrived at Woodstock from my conservative hometown of West Hartford, CT, I stood spellbound feeling the vibrations of 500,000+ people singing these these funny words called 'mantras'. Within a year of being at Woodstock, at age 17, I was initiated into Transcendental Meditation (TM) mantra meditation by Joe Clarke, probably the first TM instructor in America, who came to my 'alternative' high school to initiate my girlfriend and myself.

Ah, the beauty of Japa Yoga - mantra meditation! I loved the feeling of well-being. Unfortunately my girlfriend broke up with me shortly thereafter, and I resorted to smoking lots of pot and hashish and three packs of Marlboros daily!

After more than a year of a foggy mind, wired and exhausted body, and burning lungs, I wandered into Swami Satchidananda's Integral Yoga Institute/Ashram (IYI) to try something 'new' and strange called 'yoga'. Within weeks I totally lost the desire to smoke cigarettes or ingest drugs, and my body and mind felt incredibly light, clear, calm, and energized. By 1971, I moved into the IYI to immerse myself in Eastern philosophy, lifestyle, and yogic practices, including kirtans.

Satchidananda embodied incredible wisdom, compassion, and humor, and my heart always opened immensely just being in his presence. And the open heart was what I began to recognize as my true self, always a feeling I am 'home' spiritually. I received mantra initiation directly from him during which his fingers on my third-eye felt like a lightening bolt crackling through the crown of my head. For the next six years, he was my guru. By age 19 in 1972, I was certified by the IYI to teach hatha yoga and also lead Friday night kirtans. I soon bought my first harmonium ( a BINA made of compressed green cardboard! ) to accompany myself, mostly with one-finger droning notes.

While living in the IYI, I read a phenomenal book entitled 'Be Here Now' by some dude named Ram Dass, (formerly Harvard professor Richard Alpert), who had recently returned from India as a changed man after meeting the great yogi Neem Karoli Baba - aka Maharajji. I had to meet this Ram Dass guy (www.ramdass.org) so I sought him out at his father's summerhouse in New Hampshire...many times! When I looked into RD’s eyes and first heard him talk, I felt an instant connection and knew, in my innermost knowing, that I wanted a similar transformation in myself as I experienced in him.

So I sought him wherever he was holding gatherings. These occasions had lectures, discussion, meditation, and always kirtan. In these settings, I fell in love more deeply with more and more chants. Ram Dass has always been able to light the way for me and for so many others through his gift of translating Eastern spirituality for Western ears through his keen intellect and enormous heart.

In 1973, I was still young and confused about life. I sought Ram Dass’s advice about inner and outer direction, and he responded with incredibly insightful and caring letters as well as invitations to more gatherings. One time, he invited me to an apartment in NYC for an afternoon of one-on-one intensive spiritual work with him which resulted in a ‘visitation’ from Neem Karoli Baba (Maharaji - www.neemkarolibaba.com) who had recently passed away in India. Well, only his body passed away.

At the beginning of the session, Ram Dass said “Maharaji and I are going to do some inner work with you and we’ll push you to the edge, but we won’t let you fall off. Do you trust us?” I said “yes!” And so began a long afternoon of uninterrupted close-up eye contact and practices that took both of us deeper and deeper. During the session, Ram Dass’s head, at times, looked like Maharaji’s head and sometimes looked like a monkey head (maybe Hanuman, the embodiment of selfless service?).

I never have figured out exactly what ‘really’ happened, and it happily remains a mystery. Toward the end, my mind just gave up and I began weeping and weeping while experiencing a state of total ecstatic, unconditional love. This experience of feeling total unconditional love firmly solidified my love of Bhaki Yoga, the path of the heart and led me to return to kirtan years later as my ‘direct dial’ to Source consciousness. To this day I feel Maharaji’s loving presence whenever I call upon him, but I have not claimed any external 'guru' since the late 1970s.

My other pivotal experience was in 1974 when I spent the summer in Boulder, CO at the newly-opened Naropa Institute. I studied and practiced with a wonderful array of people that summer including Ram Dass teaching the Bhagavad Gita, Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche teaching Tibetan Buddhism, daily kirtans with Krishna Das, Vipassana meditation with Joseph Goldstein, and Indian music theory & chanting classes with the wild and greatly gifted Bhagavan Das (the yogi who introduced Ram Dass to Neem Karoli Baba).

I studied and practiced chants and scales with Bhagavan Das at 6:00 am every morning of the summer. And many days, three or four of us would go off to a nearby park with Krishna Das to sing still more kirtan. The eclectic nature of that summer paved the way for my eclectic approach to spirituality in general.

Toward the end of the 1970s, I realized that growing spiritually through the paradigm of surrendering my ego to Swami Satchidananda felt suffocating and ineffectual. What I had loved about Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche was his emphasis upon claiming our inner spiritual authority and not handing an ounce of our authority to another being. In the 1980s, I focused on Vipassana Buddhist practices as well as Healing Tao practices with Master Montak Chia. The kirtan seed of ecstatic singing lay dormant as I put my devotional interests away in a box and became an academic, gathering undergraduate degrees in English Literature and Art History, and a master’s degree in Urban Planning & Economic Development. Hey, what can I say? Life unfolds in mysterious ways!

For me, the 1980s were a mix of academics, Buddhist meditation, second marriage life, having a child, and a lot of psychotherapy to heal parts of myself shaped by severe parental emotional abuse and its consequent results of feeling unworthy, inadequate, addictive, and not 'good' enough. The 1990s were again filled with lots of inner work with an emphasis on the practices expounded by Harville Hendrix in 'Getting the Love You Want'. The therapy helped tremendously, but what was missing was the feeling of open-heartedness and ecstatic joy that I associated with singing the divine mantras, especially with folks like Ram Dass and Krishna Das. In the 1990s, Krishna Das, after a long absence himself from the kirtan world, began to travel around offering kirtans, and I attended them. I had no interest in leading kirtan as I had long ago given away my harmonium. Also, I felt that I needed to feel much better about myself before I could possibly lead others in an ecstatic practice.

Holly Hartmann, my beloved partner since 1980, recognized the joy in me when I returned from others' kirtans. She could see my future way before I could see it - one of her many talents! In 2002, she gave me a harmonium for Christmas/Hanukah.

I thanked her, but told her that playing harmonium was something from my distant past, a quaint memory. I returned it without playing as much as one single note. And one year later, I found myself standing in Keshav Imports in Manhattan buying a harmonium. And then another one. The local kirtan wallah Shubalananda invited me to play with him at his kirtans and I studied harmonium technique with him. Not long after that, people in the kirtan community began to ask me to lead kirtans in my home attic. I soon discovered Claude Stein, founder of the Natural Singer workshops in New York, who helped me immensely to reclaim my singing voice. And here I am, full circle from almost 40 years ago, leading kirtan after kirtan. This time, kirtans are the focus of my life.

I now lead kirtans regionally and nationally at spiritual and educational centers, yoga studios, retreats, workshops, music venues, and chant festivals. I also feel guided to offer kirtans in venues previously unknown for chanting such as addiction groups, corporate retreats, and venues I have not yet imagined. I love trying new paradigms. If you have an idea, I'm all ears!

I take responsibility for creating my life but also believe I co-create it with Spirit (which can have its own agenda and timing!). I believe that we all can discover and claim our inner spiritual authority that guides us to live aligned with our soul purpose. When I chant, I experience my inner compass with no interference from an external authority.

Well, the journey is always filled with surprises and twists and turns. Leading kirtan is a great joy. This seems to be my spiritual purpose and my right livelihood. This is the way my life is unfolding and I love to share it with you.