ME AND YOU--WE ARE WHO? Part I

ME AND YOU—WE ARE WHO? is the first book I completed. I wrote it in 2003, and it was published by the Sambodh Society, Inc., in 2006. It has a very strange origin.

In 2003, a friend and I were taking an internet course on consciousness awakening. Periodically, we would travel from Goshen, Indiana, where I was living at the time, to South Bend for meetings with other course participants.

One day, as I was working on my course, I was asked to name one of my spiritual mentors. I was quite shocked when my mind spewed out a nonsensical response: Dr. Suess.

Then, of course, the “why” question followed. That was easy to answer. I’d always admired Dr. Suess as a writer of children’s books. Not only was his work clever and funny, his cute stories had important spiritual messages embedded in them.

On my way home from a meeting in South Bend one evening, I laughingly told my friend about how I’d responded to the question about spiritual mentors. When I got home and started getting ready for bed, something astonishing happened. A very Suessian poem started rolling through my head. I sat down on my bed, listening in amazement.

You’re you, and I’m me. You’re you, and I’m me. That’s plain and simple, that’s what I see. You live in your skin, and I live in mine. Can’t argue with that, and that is just fine. These eyes and these ears, this belly, these toes. These things are mine, and your things are those.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think the departed Dr. Suess had responded to my flattery by using my mind as a channel.

For the next few days, the story continued to come, in jingly rhyme form. Three years later, after doing a bit of editing and employing my artist son to do the illustrations, I had a finished book in hand.