ABOUT Shirley

I worked most of my adult life in title insurance companies as an Escrow Officer.  My job was to collect all the diverse instructions and plans of a real estate transaction from all the parties, organize them and create instructions and documents to enable the transaction to be completed to everyone's satisfaction. 

The reason I explain all this here is because I am still acting as an Escrow Officer, except now I am serving as an “ENERGY Escrow Officer”!  No more real estate transactions…only “Energy” transactions!  My passion is serving others in understanding, becoming aware, and managing their ENERGY Escrow Accounts.  We all have abundant untapped, undiscovered energy accounts that need to be opened and processed and disbursed.  We all need to open escrow, so that we can complete our life path transactions to get the results we want. 

I believe this process is meant to be an exciting adventure and not serious drudgery.  Certainly, our human nature doesn't rush into challenges and problems, but if we understand the pattern and the process of how life's escrows work, it can be fun.  It isn't a problem if you have the solution or know where to get it.

My wild and sometimes crazy life experiences are what drove me to search out answers to my hundreds of questions.  Throughout my life I have been a voracious reader of spiritual, philosophical literature and self-esteem books. 

I have been searching for over 30 years through various philosophies, religions, metaphysics, and mythology. What I have learned is that each and every one of these is valuable and has wisdom to teach us. 

I grew up in a mid-western Southern Baptist family. As you probably know, Baptists don't believe any other teaching or idealogy has value. It was always hard for me to fit in. My family moved to Arizona where I attended Arizona State University, rebelled and became very non-religious.

After I graduated and married we moved to San Francisco in 1965. We fell into a pretty extreme religious group in Marin County, and ended up joining their church. We practically learned the Bible by heart during our tenure there. You might even say we were fanatics attending meetings or classes 5 days a week.

My husband let his music store go to seed, and we studied for the ministry full time. His son, Mickey Hart, joined the Grateful Dead as a second drummer after the job he had with his dad ended when the music store closed.

Because of financial problems a year or so later, we accepted an offer from the Grateful Dead to manage them, as they were also having financial and organizational problems. But we were the polar opposite of the scene and the band. After a year everything blew up...the marriage, the relationship with the church, and the job with the band. I was left alone with three sons under five, no job, no family around and feeling very desparate. The world at that time felt like it too was falling apart. This 1969-1970.

These life altering experiences caused me to question "Why is this happening?  What does it all mean?".  The traditional Christian teaching didn't help me and couldn't answer my questions.

Over many years of searching I began to see a beautiful pattern emerging from all the ancient teachings throughout history including current scientific and hilosophical discoveries.  This pattern unites everythiing together into a oneness that is awe inspiring. I could see how my life experiences had been following the Pattern. (I had been on the Yellow Brick Road all along!)

Although I consider myself very spiritually oriented, I don't adhere to a specific religion, because I feel that rigid belief systems separate and divide people. We see that religions can create great strife in our lives and our world.  On the other hand, opening ourselves to learn from all the various traditions helps us weave a beautiful tapestry that speaks to the heart. We can gain great understanding, peace and harmony from learning how much we are the same and focusing on that.

I've continued to study as much as possible. I have a Masters of Divinity and am an ordained inter-faith minister. I've studied and taught Bible studies for many years. Currently I enjoy meeting with what I like to call Juicy Crone Soul Circle groups. I love leading workshops that explore the hidden inner meanings of myth and story.

I tend to lean toward teachings that are more like a  “kitchen table” kind of wisdom that is easy to understand and apply in the everyday world of jobs, kids, chaos and confusion. Exploring Nature's patterns, fairy tales, mythologies and folk stories is an easy, joyful way to understand life's patterns.  This is how I learned, and am continuing to learn, some of the answers to “Who am I? How do I fit into the whole scheme of things? How can I make my life work? What is the meaning of all the suffering and strife in the world?"  I'm hoping that you will too.

The Cosmic Sand Box's intention is to examine these questions in the spirit of innocence and fun, because I believe that we are here to experience unmitigated JOY most of the time.  To quote the Bible,  “the Joy of the Lord is our strength” and Jesus said "your joy should be abundant".  Joy empowers and energizes us.  All our answers are within us, we just need to become aware of that. I sincerely hope you will join me for an  “Energy Aware Adventure” and come play in our Cosmic Sand Box.   

Enjoy.....   your fellow seeker and sand box partner, Shirley Hart