Memories of the Harmonic Convergence

This morning I ran across a reference to the Harmonic Convergence, which occurred on August 16, 1987; bringing back memories. At that time, I had been doing volunteer work helping publish a slick magazine called "Meditation" and was learning lots about the holistic healing and spiritual awakening focus of that time era, in which the Human Potential Movement was still happening and Whole Life Expos were held every year or two, always full of new healing experimental offerings. Health and wellbeing for all people and nations were the aim back then. (I wonder what happened to that healing healthy focus, does not seem to exist much anymore.) The Meditation Magazine's parent group - the IPO it was called, if I remember correctly - was a prime promoter of the Harmonic Convergence, including publishing articles on it in our magazine at times; and as part of the World Peace Prayer organization out of Japan, that very early 4 o'clock in the morning on August 16, 1987, found me dressed in my best dark suit and tie, taking my turn on stage at the Long Beach Auditorium, sequentially carrying a flag of one of the nations of the world, as the whole auditorium full of people and myself chanted the series of peace phrases for that nation - ending with "May Peace Prevail on Earth" - for its land, its flora and fauna, and its people, moving that nation's flag in the prescribed set of motions and with a special kind of meditative prayer as I did so, as I had been taught to do. I took turns with several other members of the Meditation Magazine group, over and over onto stage and off, and eventually we had covered all the nations of the world and their individual flags; then the event was over. Similar ceremonies were being held simultaneously all over the world, that was why the 4 AM time of start, per the time zone in LA. Also, I knew that behind the stage, there were a group of Japanese people sitting in a circle, simultaneously doing a special prayer for the nations each in turn, visible to me as I went back stage to get a new flag and await my next turn on stage.

Since then, on rare occasions such as today, I again see a reference to the Harmonic Convergence. But the most interesting reminders of that activity, was that for several years later, I kept running into odd coincidences related to one or another of the nations which I had happened to carry their flag and do the prayer for them.

And 23 years later, I still have the American flag I bought to use to practice doing those now-forgotten ritualistic flag wavings and prayer for peace of that ritual on stage. Although it had spent many years at the condo of my mother and stepfather in Hemet, CA, since I had been spending that weekend at their place, and drove to and from Long Beach from there that morning; I only got the flag back after my mother's passing. It now stands in my living room, and on special occasions such as Independence Day and Memorial Day, it goes out on the stanchion mounted on the front of my house.