Stage 5. Early adulthood – The Soul Apprentice at the Wellspring
In the Interactive Table I say this is when I was 28-57 years old. The “Wellspring” is the Zen Center of Los Angeles, where I lived from 1972 to 2001. The “Soul Apprentice” is me as a student of Maezumi Roshi. While there I studied with him for 22 years and 9 months, got my BA degree, met my wife, we raised our two daughters, I became a manager in a Fortune 500 company, was laid off after ten years, started a small consulting business, and eventually started a new life as an elementary school teacher.
The transition from my counterculture search (The Wanderer in the Cocoon) to becoming a student of Maezumi Roshi at the Zen Center (The Soul Apprentice at the Wellspring) corresponds to the turning point called Soul Initiation in Nature and the Human Soul by Bill Plotkin. He says
Once your survival dance is established, you can wander, inwardly and outwardly, searching for clues to your sacred dance, the work you were born to do. Your sacred dance sparks your greatest fulfillment and extends your truest service to the world. Discovering the deep structure of your sacred dance is your goal in the Cocoon. Committing to this sacred dance is the essence of Soul Initiation. You know you’ve found it when there’s little else you’d rather be doing. Getting paid for it is superfluous. You would gladly pay others, if necessary, for the opportunity.
The problem is I didn’t establish my survival dance before committing to my sacred dance of studying in a Zen community, which then became a major theme for my early adulthood.
For about 13 of those 28 years I was also an Apprentice (if not Soul Apprentice) to a few business people, at the Wellspring of corporate America. The interplay of those two apprenticeships, zen and corporate, is a main theme of this long period. A second theme is the transition from a lonely batchelor to a dedicated husband, father, and family man. A third theme is that when Maezumi Roshi died in 1995 I started unpacking my attachment to the myth of dharma transmission. Twelve years later I made an attempt to redefine my quest. And twelve more years later I tried again with Practice, Path, Goal.
Avnet (1981-1991)
Working toward a shared planetary consciousness that heals the Earth