In 1991, while my wife and I were dating, two of her sisters went off to a personal success seminar put on by an organization called ‘The Forum’.
At the end of the seminar, both sisters crashed back into the apartment like they had just escaped death. Terrified, they remained housebound for weeks. One slept with a Crucifix on her chest.
It had something to do with deprivation and brainwashing. The whole family, lifelong Catholics, were freaking out, my wife included.
I was not. I had no idea what they were talking about.
My wife and I married in May 1992. Around the same time, her uncle made a bunch of frantic phone calls to his brothers and sisters. The youngest of ten kids, he had many options.
Extraordinarily successful and confident over the past three years, he was suddenly afraid to be alone. Raised in a staunch Catholic family, he once sold Bibles door-to-door. But years had passed since he had last been in a church. Now, huddled in his remote cottage all alone, he expressed his sudden fear to his brothers and sisters about what he had become.
“What he had become” began three years earlier. Desperate to break the cycle of poverty, he attended an intense, personal success seminar called ‘The Forum’.
Apparently, he was a quick study. Almost overnight, he tapped into a network of new friends and contacts and launched a wildly successful pyramid scheme, selling thousands of $75 water filters for close to $1,500 each; using a pitch - delivered with a newfound persuasiveness - that tapped the yen for better health and longer life.
Rich for the first time, he set out to indulge in all the extravagances that had been forever denied him. It was a disturbing sight to the rest of his family. A new, very young girlfriend, flaunted in front of his wife and two kids. A drug habit and parties in rented hotel rooms with free-flowing Dom Perignon, a bevy of young girls and no inhibitions. Big cars, big houses, and drinks on the house; a bad nouveau riche stereotype if there ever was one.
He asked, believed, and received . . . and received. So much so that, even though it seemed to violate every bone in their Catholic bodies, my sisters-in-law were tempted to explore the same path.
It was no surprise to his devout brothers and sisters that he would eventually feel remorse. All the same, he had gone so far away that they did not seriously expect him to return.
And they seemed to have no clue about what was really going on.
Failing to find calm or much support, he drank desperately. One night, he ran screaming from his cottage, jumped into his car, and sped off in pure panic. Five minutes later his lifeless body lay in a field beside the road, thrown through the sunroof of his crashed Mercedes. His life ended at 46. He died rich, with no physical maladies.
Back at the cottage, strewn on the floor, his family found an array of candles, crucifixes, and Bibles.
The event occurred almost a month after my marriage to his niece. For years, a mystery surrounded his death, his manic behavior in his last days standing in stark contrast to his apparent physical and financial health. As you can imagine, throughout his large family there were plenty of answers. There were murder theories. He was on the verge of divorcing his wife who at his death received a large insurance payout. There were theories that he was killed by unsavory business partners, or by someone far down the pyramid who realized they would be stuck with a bushel of overpriced water filters.
Maybe the Bibles showed that he was desperate to return to the fold. Why did he reach out mere days before his death? Or was it all simply a coincidence and he was yet another drunk-driving fatality?
None of the theories ever satisfied. As it hit so close to home, I was surrounded by people grinding away, trying to find the one explanation that felt closest to the truth. Over time, family members eventually settled on their own various understandings which in some cases pitted them squarely against one another.
I didn’t much care. I comforted my wife and watched the gossip fly. As macabre as many of the details were, he was drunk, missed a curve in the road and hit a tree. That was a good enough explanation for me and I put it to bed. I was 27.
And even though ‘The Forum’ was clearly mentioned in two bizarre stories that swirled around me for months, I made no attempt to connect them.
A Sudden Change
Towards the end of Summer 2011, at the age of 46, I experienced a series of spiritual epiphanies, each one more intense than the last. Triggered I was sure by escalating personal crises combined with a desperate search to finally find the secret to success and happiness.
The four epiphanies made up a harrowing journey that challenged and quickly shattered my deeply defended core beliefs. I was exposed for a time to an incredible world of insight and knowledge that was far more revealing than anything I dared to think possible. Along the way, there were a couple of times where I didn’t think I would pull through at all.
And it turns out that it had a lot to do with what years before had so terrified my wife’s uncle and sisters.