On December 14, 2024, I published my new book, First Awakening: A Spiritual Memoir. For this blogpost, I’ll reprint the Preface from First Awakening: A Spiritual Memoir. I’ll soon follow up with links to where it may be purchased, as this process has undergone a few delays.
Preface to First Awakening: A Spiritual Memoir by John Roger Barrie
Fifty years ago, I underwent a profound spiritual experience that forever changed my life. The present book is a greatly expanded account of that experience, which I originally published in my spiritual novel, Dialogues With the Lord of Time, in early 2023.
While I recount several factors that collectively triggered this event, looking back I can see there were two principal events that actually portended it. The first was my car accident that happened around June 1974, when I overturned my VW van in West Los Angeles. Of all the places to come to a rest along iconic, sinuous Sunset Boulevard, my car and I landed directly in front of a lifelike statue of Jesus, which was then located at the northwest corner of Marymount Place. In retrospect, this event appeared to foretell what would begin three short months later, as the statue of Jesus’ outstretched arms seemingly scooped up and embraced a lost seventeen-year-old, who was then exploding with questions about his place in life and was very much receptive to the inspiration and guidance provided by Jesus’ sublime, transformative messages.
The second event was my unforgettable eleven-day wilderness adventure in early August 1974, wherein I backpacked through California’s jaw-dropping Sierra Nevada mountains. This left an indelible impression that changed my life and outlook.
The very heart and essence of my spiritual experience occurred during November 1974. I have been reliving this experience throughout the months of autumn 2024, and it seems fitting that most of this expanded account was assembled and written in November 2024. Further, as if a gift handed down from the cosmos to commemorate this mystical golden anniversary, the days of the week lined up in 2024 exactly as they originally took place in 1974.
A professor of religious studies once asked me why I called my spiritual experience the “First Awakening.” My reply: “Hope springs eternal there will be a Second Awakening.” Indeed, each unfolding of deepening spirituality in our lives develops more as a dynamic process of becoming rather than a static process of being, building and expanding on what came before, and incorporating the realizations from the past into the present, then carrying them into the future. The pivotal point for all such realizations in my life is fondly recalled in this memoir, which details a three-month spiritual unfolding that occurred in autumn 1974—my First Awakening.
-John Roger Barrie, Nevada City, California, November 28, 2024
How wonderful that you are sharing this pivotal and formative event at a half-century’s distance. Such reflection reminds me of Dame Julian’s first and second sets of reflections on her visions of Christ. May you be enriched anew by revisiting these insights.
Thank you, Elizabeth, for your kind and supportive comments. I am honored and humbled that you should mention Julian of Norwich’s “Shewings” in connection with my reflections. I’ll have to revisit her magnificent body of work. – John Roger Barrie