Mother of Love

Mother of Love

Now...how can I explain Nita? I suppose it's fairly impossible...but I will do what I can.

I started doing primal therapy with Nita and soon realized that one didn't "do therapy" with Nita: one simply became one of Nita's extended family. This is difficult because I am still so full of emotions concerning Nita...even after all these years. I think it might be best if I tell you the story first and then go back and talk about Nita herself.

I had been doing therapy with Nita for about a year when this happened. I had started dating Sherry fairly often. I had also become a good friend of Nita's son (Sherry's brother) Mike. Nita would call and talk to you on the phone and know whether you were ready for a "session". She was really amazing that way. She’d say you weren't ready yet...or schedule a session for two weeks from now. She could literally listen to the sound of your voice and know when you were going to be ready to work. And when you had a session with Nita...either she decided to move in with you or she had you move in with her...and the session could last anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks.

So I was down in San Diego staying at Nita's place and we had been working for about a week when Nita told me that we still had about another week of work to do...but that she had to leave for a dental appointment. She had complicated oral surgery issues with her jaw and she only trusted a dental specialist in Sacramento. I was recruited to drive her to the airport and I would stay at her place and pick her up at the airport in a couple of days.

I never saw her again. What happened was that Nita suffered a stroke during the dental procedure and never recovered. She died in a hospital the next day or the day after.

I was devastated. Nita had died.

Somehow (no, I don't remember how) I was in Sacramento staying with a therapist/friend of Nita...and seriously considering suicide. I was so deeply involved with Nita. She was my spiritual mother. She was my teacher. She was my reason for living. She was everything to me...and to dozens and dozens of others.

Nita had been doing therapy on an extended family of thirty or forty people. Often, Nita would be doing therapy on several members of the same family...and therapy on relatives (cousins, aunts, parents) of these families. In return, we all took care of Nita...paid her rent...many even just paid for therapy. Others would devote time in one form of work or another. Nita had me driving to Los Angeles every week to be a salesman for a small printing company she was involved with.

Nita did have a sort of "core group"...consisting of her son, Mike, Mike's good friend, Ron, Nita's daughter, Sherry, myself, Sherry's best friend, Sharon, and Sharon's brother, Ron.

Also, Nita (like several million other people) was into a guy called Edgar Cayce...a seer or prophet...who believed that California was going to earthquake into the ocean. So Nita spent a lot of her time maneuvering her family to a presumably "safe" town of Livingston, Montana.

Nita seemed the busiest of all...doing therapy on 30 to 40 of us....just spreading love and sharing her consummate joy.

When she died, we decided to be true to her wishes and simply make the move. Not the smartest decision, perhaps, but we were full of love for Nita and each other. How could we not?

With all of this going on, how could I properly define Nita as one of my teachers? Well, aside from her total disregard of time…which I should have seen as a dead giveaway in her case...you’d just have to look into her beautiful blue eyes. Nita’s whole being flowed with love...but not like her eyes. She was a literal rush of love. With one look from those eyes of unconditional love, it was easy to believe that maybe you were lovable...maybe you were worthy just to be able to walk among other men.

I learned a lot about love from Nita. I got a deep sense of how most people just learn how to "perform" love. Nita became love. Nita was love. It consumed her whole being.

Of course, during this period, we all spent our time running various errands and researching our new state. Nita, Mike, Ron and I even made an exploratory trip up to Montana to see just what we might be facing. The culture shock was incredible...but we eventually did it. Roughly 30 of us made the move...from a city environs of nine million to the town of Livingston with 5600....some 20 miles north of Yellowstone Park...about 40 miles from Old Faithful.

Nita saw Montana during that first exploratory run, but she died before we made the big exodus. We scattered her ashes near Monterey..

I never stopped loving her. I never really stopped doing therapy with her...her sitting in a chair next to my bed where I'd do my best to spill my guts out.

I have awakened and yet I am closer to Nita than I ever was in life. She is "with" me now...much like Jesus or the Buddha are both “with” me now.

Over the next couple of years we tried to live the Livingston lifestyle, but we really didn't have a teacher. We tried to work on each other, but none of us could make it fly. The only one of us that Nita pronounced "clean" and "living in the moment" was Sherry's friend, Sharon. Half of us slowly scattered and half stayed to be true to Nita's legacy. Mike wandered but has returned to Livingston. I left for Beverly Hills, where the most prominent proponent...the actual discoverer of Primal Therapy had his institute...Dr. Emil Janov.

I stayed with the Primal Institute for about a year. I never really made any kind of a connection there. Nothing "stuck". At the same time, I started working for a burial insurance company where I wrote all the junk mail...and ended up marrying the beautiful Vice President of Personnel, Ardith Hanisch...who I understand died a few years ago. I was married to "Ardie" for several years...during which I worked with one of Adie's teachers named Janaka.

Janaka was a Master of Pranayama...which is a method of purifying body, mind and spirit through spiritual exercising in breathing and breath control. No, it didn't really work for me. But I include Janaka here for the effort he made and success he had at moving the center of myself from head to heart. And for the year or so that we worked on this concept, I feel he should be included.

After working for Pierce National for a year or so, I left and opened my own little agency. Pyramid Publishing was really two different companies: on one side I created brochures and did a lot of business development, designing company structure. In a way, the defining company brochure set up the framework for many small companies. On the other side I ran a small "vanity house publishing company" where I would publish your book...if you had the money to pay for the typesetting, layout and printing. I had a 3-room office on La Brea in the heart of Los Angeles.

So I worked the office, rented an Oakwood apartment a few miles away down Wilshire....and drifted.

Where was the next Teacher?