Category: General

Our Fairy Tale Love Story

_______Mary’s “Exquisite” Call Home_______

The Rev. Dr. Richard W. Banach D. Min.

©2012

Mary and Richard on their 52nd wedding anniversary, January 10, 2011, a mere four months before Mary was called home.

It happened at the golden hour, 7 PM, just as Ramtha was seen on live stream TV, coming through the door of the Great Hall. (May 20, 2011) For several days, Mary was in a twilight zone of anticipation, only breathing about 10 to 12 breaths a minute. Upon hearing his music being played before his entrance, it suddenly increased. It’s was as if she was trying to go to be with him in her terrestrial body, but couldn’t. So she left it behind, and instead went in her celestial body. She was determined to go home, to be with him. “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.”(Luke 23:43) Jesus proclaimed the truth. Her focus card envisioned it. So, she went to be with him, and all the saints in glory, while the rest of us watched Ramtha come through the door of the Great Hall, on our computer screens!

Sunday Morning 11 AM. I am now sitting in that Great Hall, a mere six weeks later. (July 3, 2011) It is filled with students attending Ram’s Assay. He has just left the stage and is walking around the Great Hall, teaching as he walks. lovingly being present to everyone. The spiritual atmosphere is pungent with love. He’s now walking up the center aisle towards where Mary and I sat the last time she was physically in the Great Hall. (November 15, 2010) I’m getting goose bumps. My heart pounds. I heat up. It’s about to become a holy moment; a moment of personal privilege. He comes close. Pauses. Speaks softheartedly.

“I love you.” Spoken with the profound empathy only a god could express,

who once was a man himself, grieving over lost love.

Touched with a joyous rapture, I thank him for being with us through all this.

“Thank you,” he stresses, “for being with me.”

“Mary’s transition” I affirm, “O how beautiful it was.”

“Exquisite,” he decrees.

“It was exquisite.”

“Exquisite!” he repeats for emphasizes.

Reaching towards him excitedly, I proudly point out how she left to go be with him

just as he was coming through the door of the Great Hall.

“I know,” he attests. “And she will come back to you.”

I melt into my chair, ecstatic. “She will?”

“She will, just so you can see that you have not been wrong all this time.”

Wonder-struck, I again thank him.

“I will be with you. And you be a happy man.”

“I will.”

Mary could only have had an exquisite transition, if she had also lived an exquisite life. Who was she? And what is the meaning of her coming back, and of not being wrong?

I first met her when we were classmates (1955-1958) at EBI - Eastern Bible Institute of the Assemblies of God. (Now Valley Forge Christian College) Its somewhat monastic-like campus life back then, punctuated with many weekday periods of waiting on God from 6 AM to 10 PM, was meant as training in cultivating transcendence. It reflected the deeper life teaching of some of the early Pentecostal movements finest teachers. They were inspired in part, by Elijah’s School of the Spirit (I & II Kings), which in turn, was akin to the schools of ancient wisdom.

Even the gigantic mural (15’x50’) our class painted on the front wall of Graduation Hall proved to prophetically point to the high aspiration of the Great Work. It portrayed Elijah ascending into heaven in a chariot of fire, after demonstrating mastery over matter on earth. (II Kings 2:11)

The Bible was often interpreted as a symbolic metaphor of our own spiritual journey, and of the lessons awaiting us. Texts of warfare and judgment also referenced our inner battles between flesh and spirit. As we matured spiritually, our Biblical exposition progressed towards richer levels of meaning; from those of EXOTERIC babes in Christ feeding on milk, to ESOTERIC mature adults, eating the strong meat of the word. (I Corinthians 3:2; Hebrews 5:12-14) Our curriculum focused on applying these insights to life by way of the contemplative art of waiting on God in silence, and walking with God in activity. (Isaiah 40:31) In other words, on being filled with the Spirit, and living in the Spirit, 24/7.

When we married shortly after graduation in 1958, this life style became the basis of our 52 year relationship, and 40 year partnership as a ministerial team. (Assemblies of God 1958-1974. United Methodism 1974-1998.) Over time, continuous communion with God’s manifest presence – THEISTIC MYSTICISM, deepened towards the first inklings of a sense of oneness with the presence with whom we communed – MONISTIC MYSTICISM. It was natural then, when Ramtha came along, for us to be drawn to his unitive vision of reality. (Spring 1983)

When we first met him personally, he inquired: “Would you ever have an adventure or two?” Mary turned beet red. My chest got hot: “We are ready!” “So be it,” he intoned. “Remember me in your joy.”“We will.” Life began to boil. (Sunday afternoon March 18, 1984 The Roman Catholic Church of the Ascension, West 107th St. New York City.)

A year later, we boiled over. Mind boggled! Our relationship, we learned, actually began 35,000 years before EBI, in Ramtha’s age. We were present, he said, when his army attacked the Nizear kingdom of the blue race to rescue his brother from an abusive satrap. Using highly charged theatrics, Ramtha reenacted for a small group of us, how this saga led to the fall of women and the beginning of the Persian Empire. (Siege Upon the City of the Blue Race, CD037. Also Reflections on Past Lives April 13, 1985 Tape 103; Specialty Tape. Also A Master’s Reflection on the History of Humanity Part II chapter one.)

We came home shaken, staggering. Slowly, we moved towards a wonderment. What began as a nightmare also became the stuff of a make believe fairy tale come true: our very own love story, with a promise to forever love, honor, and care for each other. Thirty-five millennia later, and right before this present life, it was as if we learned of Ramtha returning to help his people complete unfinished business, and get off the wheel of reincarnation. We talked about coming down, and taking advantage of it. “As tough and messy as it might get, let go and grow. I’ll go if you go. OK? OK!”

So here we were, in full view of those sitting in the pews, with all the ingredients of our own reality show: clergy marriage, parsonage family life, and church congregation, all interlaced with pent up past life issues exploding volcanically for final RELEASE and RESOLUTION. No wonder Ramtha took time to personally complement Mary for her courage in coming to see him, at that event. She was married to me.

But there was still hope. As a young minister, I prayed: “Oh God, I want to be all I have the potential to be. Don’t make it easy for me, and in so doing, let me die with regret because at the judgment seat of Christ (II Corinthians 5:10 i.e. Life Review) I would be shown all I could have become but never did, because I played it safe. Empower me to be equal to the challenge. Amen.” My prayer was now being answered.

Our roots in the deeper life teaching of classical Pentecostalism were a wonderful precursor to this stage of the Great Work. It emphasized God’s refining fire purifying us to be clean vessels worthy for God’s love to flow through us to a hurting world. (Malachi 3:2-3)

As we persevered, and underwent inner alchemical changes, we came to interpret our life-long experiences of God’s manifest presence in terms of what Ramtha called the “Lord God of my Being.” Our EBI school motto “To know Him by the Spirit, and by the Spirit, to make Him known” also took on esoteric meaning.

Ramtha’s manner of opening his prayers, “O my beloved God . . .” soon became commonplace in our Sunday Service printed liturgies, to be prayed by everyone. It reflected a double meaning. Exoterically: It expresses a way Christians have often already addressed God. Esoterically: It reflects the concept of the Lord God of our Being.

The Baptism in the Holy Spirit is the center piece of Pentecostal theology, so when Ramtha started speaking of the Lord God of our Being in terms of the Holy Spirit, our ears really perked up. He said it is also what was meant ages ago as our God moving over our mass, our body, our physical being. Aha! (May 23, 1988)

It was for Mary and me the missing key for us to completely correlate our religious experiences with his teaching. All the dots connected. All this time, we had been experiencing the “snatches of truth” Ramtha says are at the heart of the highest religious ideal. We literally jumped for joy in the Great Hall the day he emphasized the empowering personalism of the Holy Spirit. (Audio Tape: Our Omnipotent Spirit, February 23, 1996.)

This Holy Spirit personalism was taught at EBI. It was the message of hope we preached, taught, and counseled all these years. Since our spiritual born again awakening as teenagers, we reveled in the wonder of being led by the Holy Spirit in a charmed life; the magical, mythical, mystical 40 year Exodus saga of the Bible. It was an esoteric roadmap of life’s destiny and purpose which helped keep us sane in confusing, chaotic times.

Once we leave our old way of life represented by Egypt,
and cross the sea of commitment, we cannot go back.
We must face our inner desert, with its rebellions, its disciplines, its purifications,
and its revelations on an inner MountSinai,
Until our old slave mentality has died, and we are ready in a new generation of attitudes,
to enter our promised land of the Spirit.
(Adapted from Zev ben Shimon Hulevi in Kabbalah: Tradition of Hidden Knowledge,)

We viewed ourselves as students in this School of the Spirit; under the tutorship of our restless spirit, as Ramtha describes it, prodding us ever onward, and upward. Therefore, at the very beginning of our ministry, before ever saying “Yes” to any invitation, we insisted on first inwardly knowing if this is where our pastoral adventure should begin. After being befriended by denominational leaders, and invited to begin our ministry in a larger than normal congregation for novices, we first insisted on having an inner knowingness confirm it.

We are weekend guests of a congregation needing a new minister. Mary and I are resting between speaking Sunday morning and evening, and are waiting on God for guidance. About 45 minutes into it, I sense a “Yes,” but then become nervous. What if my new bride senses a “No.” We’ve just been married two months; just learning to live together. We both need the same leading. The suspense is unnerving. Mustering courage, I peek. There she sits, with a seer’s serene “Yes” on her face. We leap and laugh!

Thus two naive, young upstarts, in their early twenties, assumed the mantle of ministry; innocently ignorant of the sophisticated complexities arising from being public figures living in a fish bowl, sharing truth with the world, as we discover it. Now, in the twilight of our ministry, our 40th year, biblical symbol of completion and achievement, our concern was about relating the Spirit’s guidance to this climatic moment.

For some months now, we’ve been asking for clarity about the timing of our ministerial retirement. In the past, whenever I inquired, I only sensed an inner RESTRAINT, “Not yet.” Sitting in the silence, for the first time, I’m becoming aware of a shift, a major life changing shift, an inner RELEASE. “Now.” I sit quietly, digesting its magnitude. Out of nowhere, Mary quietly appears in the doorway. Her countenance glistens with the same serene assurance of a seer it did forty years ago. She speaks: “It’s time. Let’s go out on a limb.” I light up. We leap and laugh!

Thus our pastoral adventure ended. The way it began, with an inner knowingness from the Spirit. The next day we set in motion the process for early retirement, and moving to WA.

A year later, during the Secondary Group Retreat, Ramtha asked those present from the Primary group to meet him in JZ’s garden. (Sunday Afternoon March 21, 1999) Again it was a small group in numbers. At a moment of personal privilege, he dialogued for some 35 minutes about the ministry Mary and I shared together. He had me share with the group our message all those years, especially before meeting him, and of how our faith delineated from other faiths. Our dialogue ended with his toast to everyone courageous enough to take it all on in one life.

May we live to the highest ideal of our spiritual ache.
May we achieve, and find it beautiful, and rest in our conquest.
And may we understand then, that in this short battle, we have rescued ourselves from the wheel of reincarnation.

Mary was this caliber of warrior, taking it all on in rapid succession. She lived the hymn lyrics “with eternities value in view.” Her persistence in self-mastery and radically changing resulted in a certain unearthly radiance. It was evident, at times, when she taught, counseled, or shared her musical artistry, both instrumentally on piano or organ, and vocally as a soloist or chorister. Church condolence cards testify: “At church meetings, she lit up the room with her presence, every time she walked through the door.”

In the secretive high halls of congregational control, whenever the power brokers scratched their heads over what to do about Richard, I have a sneaking suspicion there was always a Mary fan saving my hide: “But we like Mary. She cheers up the place with her gospel of the lighthearted joy of the Lord being our strength.” (Nehemiah 8:10)

At the Church Olympics, with her characteristic childlikeness, Mary expresses Jesus’ statement: Only those who become like little children can enter the kingdom of God. (Matthew 18:3)

Oy-oy-oy. No sooner do I turn my back, after we say goodbye to the Sunday morning crowd, then Mary becomes playful with the paparazzi.

Her lighthearted joy is also memorialized in the RSE video, A Look Within. (1997)As the labyrinth is being explained and shown as the most rigorous of disciplines, Mary is seen walking out of it after the session ended with her duct taped face mask in hand, turning back with a smile of victory, for another look at the behemoth she just overcame.

Mary exits the labyrinth with exuberance! (Photo courtesy of RSE Video: A Look Within, 1997)

Russell Fischer, an early RSE student, often sought her out as a partner for sending and receiving. He said he was drawn by her radiance. “I’d look up,” she once told me, “and there he would be again, this gentle giant of a man, looming over me with a smile, ‘May I be your partner?’” When he suddenly passed, he appeared to her in the Great Hall in his midnight blue cape, smiled, and disappeared. According to his friends, there was a sense of him saying, “Everything Ramtha says is true. Stay in your body as long as you can, so you can experience it.” She did, extending her timeline several times.

She underwent surgery with a new attitude, after learning of Ram once reassuring a fellow student of surgery being the quickest way to get rid of one’s past. (November 5, 2003) When struck by a heavy four-inch thick tree limb falling 35 feet during a period of calm, mild, sunny weather in Tumwater Falls Park, she clearly changed her time line. (January 24, 2005) Her neurosurgeon said he was surprised she is still here, considering the horrendous intensity of her head injuries. Defying all odds, she quickly recovered.

Mary, The Resolute Warrior, (Christmas 2004) sitting in Ramtha’s chair, unawares she is being prepared to change her timeline at the Battle of Tumwater Falls Park. Photo: Anne Marie Bennstrom and her husband Ken Weiss, at a private dinner in their Rainier home for Mary and Richard. (December 26, 2004) For a short time, Ramtha’s chair was returned to them, while another one was being used.

Mary, The Victorious Warrior, (Christmas 2005) creating a new future on her 70th birthday (December 27, 2005) fully recovered from the Battle of Tumwater Falls Park, only a year earlier.

Six years later, her life was again threatened, this time by the findings of emergency surgery. (January 28, 2011) We again believed for the miraculous. A week later it was confirmed during a routine medical procedure. As it was about to begin, a sudden urge propelled me to go to my car, draw her as a smiling blue stick figure in a blue egg cocoon, and focus on her. I did. Lickety split! An hour later, I returned to an agitated ICU staff. She had stopped breathing during the procedure, turned blue, but then miraculously came back to life. Again hope resurrected. We reinforced it by often reciting together our favorite Ramtha decrees and Bible affirmations, like Psalm 23.

The Lord (God of my being) is my Shepherd; I shall not want...
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: For thou (the Lord God of my being) art with me...
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the House of the Lord (God of my Being) forever.

But, suddenly, abruptly, her condition changed. Radically! Terminally! Contradicting all hope! We were overwhelmed! In the midst of our darkest hour, a hand delivered message arrived from JZ Knight, through her personal courier.

My Angels Mary and Richard,
Our lives are a Mystery that we labor in all greatness to unfold our specific Meaning and Purpose. I have found in my long tenure with Ramtha through this side and the other side, that an individual like myself cannot always know about the abrupt changes in anyone's life that seem to contradict Hope.

What I can say from my point of view is Dearest Mary, know there is a greater agenda you have resolved and you are being called Home. This is the mystery of your Holy Spirit, some not revealed to me or revealed to you, but that will be revealed on the Other Side. I will focus on you and Richard as I always have.

My great hope for you both is to recognize and celebrate your journey to this next room. In as much as we have all prepared for the Days to Come, keep in mind we have all studied our composites, our spirit and soul in our Karmic Destiny. And what we need to realize is that Your Change is towards the realization of your fulfillment of that journey, and to know your Spirit on the other side and to understand this resolution and victory.

This is a journey I make every month. I have no words to tell you how glorious it is. Being afraid is natural. It is our human composite. The journey on the other side is more than glorious. I would hope you both accept this and prepare for a small departure.

Dear Mary, know that small missions are rooted in love and to make contact with Richard to know and celebrate your love and continuity. Please accept these humble words not as a measure of lacking a miracle, but as a measure of realizing a miracle.

Sending my Profound Love to You, JZ Knight (May4,2011)

Mary read it aloud. Then burst into tears of joy. I did too! Our spirits lifted. Our resolve renewed. Many friends came by to bless us, like Ann-Marie and Ken: “Onward into Forever!”

Several days later, I kissed her goodbye for the last time: “I ... love … You!”

From far off in the netherworld, she whispered back, ever so faintly: “Mum … mum … mum!”

Our family accepted it as her highest good. All three generations are students of the Ram. A few weeks later, I attended Ram’s Assay. (July 2-9, 2011) Afterwards, I emailed them about my conversation with Ram, my awareness of Mary’s presence, and briefly explained the meaning of her coming back to me just so I could see that I have not been wrong all this time.

Ramtha’s comment was linked to what I told him during our dialogue in JZ’s garden. (March 21, 1999) Some of my greatest moments as a minister were conducting funerals, because I was able to give hope to grieving, traumatized people. I’d speak of them and their departed loved one as spiritual beings, having human experiences. Like the rest of us, they forgot who they are. They look in the mirror and say, “That’s me.” But like an iceberg, two thirds of them, their immortal spirit and soul, were below the water, out of sight. They were each a spirit and a soul living in a body. The dead physical body of their loved one lies in the casket before us, but their spirit and soul were alive and possibly even here witnessing their own funeral. If they had a close relationship with this person, they might even sense him or her here. I’d add anecdotes from people who told me of their encounters.

I shared these insights when our Suffern, NY town officials called upon me to conduct the funeral of a much beloved, well-known senior citizen. Afterwards, our conservative Jewish mayor came up to me visibly moved: “Reverend, I never heard anything like that before!” (December 31, 1994)

It was the same type of response I received from the faculty and students of Stanwood WA High School in their auditorium, after conducting our grandson Christopher’s funeral. (January 12, 2008) I conducted the funerals of my grandparents, my parents and even my darling Mary, but our son John’s beloved son was like no other. Our family and the entire town were in extreme traumatic shock over a rash of youth suicides, and questionable “accidents.” Like many of his fellow Ramtha students, Chris was super sensitive to his unlimited spiritual nature being entombed in a restrictive body in heavy mass and slow time, on a prisoner planet, in an epic age. He and his closest friend, who preceded him, where captivated with the unlimited life Superman represented. Chris felt he was closest to expressing his real unlimited spiritual self when flying fast and free on his motorcycle.

At one point in the ceremony, I held up my bicycle light, the same light I used when Chris and I took bike rides together. I shinned it on everyone. “The light of God’s presence, power and love perpetually shines within every one of us. Nothing . . . nothing can put it out! But, it is not always easy to be aware of it in this present decadent age, especially for teen-agers. We may mess up, temporarily covering the light, but nothing can ever extinguish it. Even though I cover it with my hand, it still shines on, underneath, until my hand becomes so hot, I have to remove it. (I put my hand over it as an example, then pulled it away.) So, God’s presence within us always warms away our messes, until we shine on again, this time older and wiser.” It is the same basic message I taught my congregation weekly, though my children’s sermons.

At the end on my message, his School Counselor turned, and thanked me through a tear stained face for giving them hope. She requested a copy of my message to use in school counseling. Others also wanted a copy, both teens and adults. It also included the two sketches I held up during the ceremony. They were copies of the ones I had my three grandchildren make to pin up on the walls of their rooms. They replicated youngster’s illustrations of Ramtha’s March 7, 1996 teaching, printed in: The Children’s View of Destiny and Purpose. (1) A stick figure coming down the ladder of reincarnation with an empty sack (2) The stick figure climbing back up the ladder returning home with the sack filled with wisdom from having lived as a human being.

As Ramtha validated, and JZ encouraged Mary and me to prepare for, I now began having my own anecdotes to tell about celestial Mary. My first ones, written in segments over two days, were emailed to my family right after the 2011 Assay. Excerpts:

Hi Everyone

A feather shaped cloud appeared overhead in the direction of Mom’s Airstream “Blissmobile” on the last day of the Assay. It was a sunny bright morning. Everyone was in the Great Hall doing candle focus. I sat alone at the wood fire outside. The toasty fire warmed the early morning chill. Mom always loved bon fires, and was skilled at making them. We reminisced. Magic! I looked up and noticed the cloud. But, by the time I got into gear, and ran to the Airstream for my camera, most of its impressive shape evaporated.

Feather Cloud near Mary’s Airstream.(Insert photo courtesy of RSE. July 9. 2011)

Next Day. 7 AM. Wow --- it feels like Mom is standing right here. My whole body is quivering. She’s overshadowing me. Its just as real as when she was alive in this room and pressed me to email you after Ram’s seventeen hour teaching on the need to be practically and spiritually prepared as world changes intensify. (March31,2011) It’s as if she’s saying to all of us, including me, “Look at the feather cloud near my Airstream. Like Ram said: Our hearts are always weighed against a feather.”

--oOo—

I recently wandered into Gordon’s Nursery in Yelm to sit among the flowers. (June25,2011) A folding chair invited me. Directly before me was a statue of a maiden standing with arm upraised, upon which a bird rested. These thoughts began floating in my head.

“Don’t visualize me as I looked before I left, but more like an angelic version you constantly photographed nonstop….happy, smiling, and very free which was the word…… freedom……of the card I made and had to explain to you what I meant: not freedom from you, but from what Ram now calls, mybackstory.” I thought of Jesus words: “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.” Yes, Paradise, the millennial age described in the Bible, last two chapters of Revelation. It’s like when Mom left to go be with Ram as he walked through the door, she might have heard him say, “Today you shall be with me in paradise.”

Even the RSE campus seemed like paradise to me. With its golf course quality clipped lawns, and black topped roads and trails through the woods, making it a dream to ride everywhere on the bike Chris bought so we could take rides together. And with all the love of our friends being lavished upon me, it was a great time of healing. It felt like paradise!

Daily, as the early morning sunshine streamed through the windows of Mom’s RV, I saw how spotless she kept it, and thought of how she miraculously manifested it, for RSE events and private times of contemplation at Cannon Beach. I thought of her new form --- Airstream Angelic. As our friend Leo said, “She’s only a thought away.” Yes, she now has her very own brand new, youthful, wrinkle free garment --- a Celestial, Heavenly Airstream, without pain, age, fatigue. Whenever I think of her, the color rose fills my mind. And a smiling, childlike happy being keeps forming itself in my head.

I love you all. dad

I Love You!

(Thanksgiving Day November 24, 2011),
When we least expected it, a singular rose edged orb appeared, with some interior green.
Mary’s maiden name is Green!
Also pictured: our daughter Carol, and grand-daughters Elizabeth (l) and Jennifer (r).
Our son John, and daughter-in-law Karen, were visiting her family.
John’s son Christopher is with Grandma Mary, riding her around paradise, on his heavenly motorcycle.

O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?
(I Corinthians 15:55)

Life Never Ends!

(Ramtha: Love Yourself into Life, p. 95.)

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