Title: Becoming Being

Age: 51

Location: San Diego, CA

I was born in West Paterson, New Jersey forty nine years ago to Dutch immigrant parents.  I have two older brothers, one of whom was born in Holland.  When I was four we moved to Ventura, California, a quiet beach town between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.  Nothing against New Jersey, but I thank God(dess) for that everyday.  How else would I have learned to surf, learned the finer points of Mexican cuisine and learned how to let my mind wander like the flight lines of red tailed hawks high above the chaparal?  Reading Gibran's “The Prophet” at sixteen is one thing, but reading it on the beach at night with a flashlight under a star filled sky in a warm Santa Ana wind is another.

Southern Central California is a magical place of rolling brown hills, oak trees, lemon groves, fog, sun and long, empty beaches.  It is a perfect place for growing up.  There's a reason Krishnamurti chose Ojai for his Krotona Institute.  There's a reason Oprah lives in Montecito, just south of Santa Barbara.  There's a reason so many monasteries and ashrams and communes were drawn to these gentle hills and valleys on the jeweled edge of the Pacific, where the air shimmers with a sacred radiance seldom seen or felt anywhere else.

Now we live at the bottom left hand corner of the United States in San Diego, California.  Here, the desert comes right down to the ocean to create the most ridiculously perfect climate on earth.  Don't hate me 'cause I'm comfortable. 

I teach philosophy, religion, mythology and humanities at a community college a few miles north of the Mexican border.  Here in the land of Chopra and Castaneda I teach classes like Asian Philosophy, Ethics, World Religions, Mythology and Introduction to Philosophy.  I am a singer-songwriter and guitar player.  I have an alt-country, folk rock band called The Coyote Problem, www.thecoyoteproblem.com.  We have a new album called California.  It has hidden clues and secret messages sprinkled all through it about healing and transformation.  Without all that cloying New Age saccharin.  (Was that too mean?)  I practice meditation and yoga because I'm too old to surf anymore (or the water got colder).  I unlearn more every year. I'm married to the most patient woman in the world.  Her beauty is my most tenacious and persistent teacher. 

We are part of a spiritual community here in San Diego called The Unity Center, www.theunitycenter.net, where I occassionally teach classes on World Religions, New Thought and the process of Awakening.

To solidify the impression that I am a grateful recovering intellectual, read my blogs.
 
And to prove I am a total dork, I also have a MySpace page, www.myspace.com/peterbolland

Mantras I'm using lately:
    
      “Come to rest in the silence of your Presence.”

      “Find your bliss in the midst of your life, just as it is.”

      “I am that I am.”

Member Since: Friday, December 29 2006

Last Visit: 320 days ago.

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