Boomers As Spiritual Seekers

If you were of the “60s” generation, it might seem far removed from your life today. But for author Linda Lewis, it is as close now as it was when some of us were flower children. She has just written a book about The Baby Boomer as a Spiritual Seeker.

I guess I’ve always been a spiritual seeker. Even as teenagers, my friends and I would discuss the meaning and purpose of life. Why was I born? Why do people suffer? What happens after death? Who is God and how can we connect with him? Traditional religion had answers, but they weren’t enough for us. We wanted to know more, do things differently. It was typical of our boomer generation, which went on to became “flower children,” looking to make love and not war, and which nurtured the blossoming of New Age philosophies and philosophers.

Now we have are closer to 60 — some already are there — and our quest is even more compelling. As we boomers see ourselves aging and experience the loss of friends of our own generation, our questions increase. We can’t help but reflect on where life has led us, what we have and have not accomplished, and what the future has in store, during and after this existence. My own quest led me to the works of ancient and modern masters and New Age philosophers as diverse as Yogananda, Edgar Cayce, Thich Nath Hahn, and the Dalai Lama.

As an author -– my “Linda Series” of 11 YA novels based on my own diaries was published by Simon & Schuster in the 1980s and 1990s — I had always hoped to write a book that would be an easily understandable fusion of some of these philosophies. However, I didn’t know where to start. I had no credentials that would make people want to read the thoughts of Linda Lewis.

One of the edicts of New Age philosophy is that nothing happens by chance. So when I just happened to run into a friend I hadn’t seen for 10 years and her first words to me were, “Linda, I’m trying to write a book and I need your help!”, my curiosity was piqued.

The friend told me she had been attending a class on psychic phenomena, and the teacher wanted to write a book about the revelations that had come to him through his own psychic experiences and the information from past-life regressions that he had done with others. Thinking a purely factual book would be dull, he had decided he would write a novel that would present this information in a format that would be entertaining. With my friend’s help, they came up with the basic idea for a plot: the discovery of a secret manuscript in the archives of the Vatican that revealed ancient messages that contradicted centuries of church dogma. The manuscript would be brought to the attention of the Pope and the resulting controversy would threaten the foundations of the major religions of the western world.

Intrigued with the idea, I agreed to evaluate their material. The writing was a total disaster, but the author had a wealth of psychically revealed material. After interviewing him extensively and attending his classes, I discovered that his teachings matched the ideas I had formulated through my own spiritual quest, and I agreed to take over writing the book.

Once I plunged into the project, the ideas seemed to flow through me from some external source. I developed new characters and the plot to include the abduction of the Pope and an ensuing race to save him. I incorporated the original material and teachings from the Masters to form messages of the ancient scroll that would answer questions particularly pertinent to baby boomers and other seekers, and came up with a surprise ending that tied everything together. The resulting book, THE ROAD BACK TO HEAVEN, was published.

Finishing the book was a major accomplishment, but still only another step on my spiritual path. Like other boomers, I’m still a seeker, and as challenges in life continue to arise, I try to discover more answers through my readings, the help of my guru, Vasudeva, my work as a Hospice volunteer, and through taking and teaching classes in yoga and meditation.

Copyright Linda Lewis, 2007. Used by permission of the author.