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Who Is Ron McCray?
So, taking a deep breath, here goes. Figuring out where to start in telling the story of over a half-century of living is daunting. Since my interests now are primarily the application of metaphysics and things spiritual to everyday life including business, I am going to focus on that part of my life in addition to a few demographically oriented facts. I was born in Lexington, Kentucky on February 9 and was an only child until the birth of my sister, Debbie, when I was fourteen. She and I have always been close even given the difference in our ages. I grew to adolescence in a typical, Mayberry kind of town. I played sandlot and pickup sports, was a Boy Scout, and generally liked to be outside a lot. When I could not be outside, I read - a lot and widely. I had an interest even then in the esoteric and often thought a great deal about why people did what they did. The answers were not to come until much later. In high school, I was an excellent scholar, a so-so athlete (basketball and track), and a nerd pretty devoid of any social life. I made almost straight A's and received an NROTC scholarship to the University of Louisville where I first studied engineering, and nearly flunking out, switched to psychology graduating and receiving a commission in the navy. I was still trying to figure out why people did what they did. My first duty in the navy was on a destroyer home ported in Key West, Florida which was pretty heady for kid from Kentucky. I was the communications officer on the destroyer and traveled to a lot of the Caribbean. My second ship was a command ship based in Norfolk, Virginia which was unbelievably cushy duty after two years on a WW II vintage destroyer. During my active duty days, I married Susan whom I knew from the University of Louisville. On being released to the reserves as a Lieutenant, Susan and I returned to Louisville. I entered the PhD program in clinical psychology. I still had not figured out why people did what they did. After a year of full-time graduate school, I still had no clue as to why people did what they did, so I went to work for IBM in the Louisville branch office. IBM was somewhat like the navy, only more fun. Thus began a long career in information systems that spanned several companies and eventually led me to San Diego, California. During our marriage, Susan and I had a son, Patrick, who is my only child. Patrick is an interesting fellow. I have known few people who had the awareness of what they wanted to do in life, and Patrick is one of them. He aspired to the dramatic arts while very young, and that is precisely what he has done with his life thus far. He received an MFA in Drama from Louisana State University and is actively engaged in his passion. Susan and I divorced, and I quickly entered into a relationship with a woman with whom I worked. It was not a good match, and ended a few years later. I still did not know why people did what they did, and in particular, me. Arriving in San Diego, I went to work for a large defense contractor managing a really big software development project that had me jetting back and forth to Washington, DC for over five years. I had gotten burned out on software and big companies. I did publish a book, a fable, during that time, The First Manager, about a tribe of cave dwellers who needed to create management in order to survive. Some might say that now we need to do away with management in order to survive! The book never did really well, and the publisher went out of business. Over the next few years, I would write other books but none were not published until the advent of the ones described and available through this website. I still did not know why people did what they did. I left the large defense contractor, tried my hand unsuccessfully in having my own business, and eventually became the regional director of training for a medium size company's California region. It was a really great job; I liked it a lot, and did well. Being a trainer was something that I took to very easily. It was then that I began to scratch the surface of why people did what they did. Much more was to come later, in fact, all of the "good" stuff was to come later. That job lasted a little over three years. I got downsized. I started my own training business and was beginning to do well when the offer of a seemingly great job came along in Irvine, California not too far from San Diego. It was to understudy the president of a small Internet company who had sold his company to a larger one and was going to take his money and leave in a few months. Well, he decided to stay,and I was back on the street after six months. It was then I decided that I did not have to work for corporate America (how many signs does one need?). Around this time I enrolled in a Masters program in spiritual psychology at the University of Santa Monica in Santa Monica, CA. It is a two-year program but I opted out at the end of the first year as I had received what I came for - a formalized study of why people do what they do from a spiritual perspective which is really all I was interested in at that time. Classical psychology really held little appeal for me any longer. I left San Diego, moved to the San Jacinto Mountains south of Palm Springs to a small community called Idyllwild and became the self-styled "mad mountain monk" for about three years. I really enjoyed the mountains and found several excellent power spots and ley lines. I eventually began taking people on shamanic journeys to these spots and was privileged to witness some really amazing journeys. I also wrote and published a book, A Tao Of God, which is featured on another page on this site. In my last year
of living in Idyllwild (spanning 2003-04) I found what I had sought
(mostly unconsiously) for many years: a partner who loved m uncondtionally
and who I could learn to love in the same way. Her name is Cindy and
we actually met in Louisville, KY almost twenty years earlier. Our Our contact expanded to phone calls and instant messaging in addition to the emails. In September she came to southern California and the two of us attended a week-long seminar in the Mount Shasta area. It was during this time that we really fell in love with one another. During the next six months in a series of adventures and mis-adventures, I left Idyllwild, Cindy left Louisville, and we traveled to Utah (and that is definitely another story), eventually settling in the southwestern corner of the state near St George in mid-2004. We have had a mega education in building and sustaining a sacred, committed relationship, and, are in fact, working on a book that describes our experiences and how we got to where we are now. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Those are pretty much the facts of what happened up to now. Now for the good stuff… my spiritual journey. For much of my adult life, the refrain of the old Peggy Lee song kept bouncing around in my head, "Is that all there is?" I enjoyed moderate success financially, professionally, and socially, yet was haunted by a will-of-the-wisp that there was more to life than the materialism that I enjoyed. I experienced frequent frustration, anger, and fear around money. Nothing I did abated these emotions that is until I "chanced" to run into a woman that worked at the same big defense contractor as I did and whom I had not seen for some time. To put it mildly she had undergone a terrific transformation during the time since I had last seen her. In my subtle way, I asked her why she was no longer a ditz. She told me that she had attended a series of seminars and program conducted by a company called PSI. Visions of the dreaded California personal growth and development organizations danced in my head. Being locked in hotel meeting room and beaten with wet towels until I "got" something had little appeal. Nonetheless, the changes in her spoke loudly as to the potential. I was not getting anywhere in improving my life on my own, so maybe there was hope with PSI. Over the next year I attended a number of PSI programs, and out of that I realized that it was possible to change who I was being. I didn't know how, but I knew change was possible. I knew more, was a bit wiser, but my life did not change, and in some respects, tailed downward. It was then that I met Patricia. Patricia was an adherent of the programs put on by another company, Landmark Education Corporation that had similar goals as PSI only a bit more rigorous and organized. Over the next three years I attended a number of Landmark programs including the Forum (three times) and learned more but without an improvement in my life. If anything, all of this knowledge I accumulated screamed at me that my life could be different, but I could not figure out how. I was still stuck in the why do people do what they do inquiry with me as the focus. It was at the end of my Landmark phase, that a book called The End Times by Lee Carroll was referred to me. It is a channeled work from an entity called Kryon. There is a rigorous non-spiritual element to both PSI and Landmark, and the notion that a channeled work held value for me was absurd. Nonetheless, because of the person who referred the book to me, Martin Shapiro, I ordered it and began reading on Friday evening. By Sunday at bedtime, I had finished the book. It was one of those books that seemed to be written for me exclusively. I was mesmerized. In the book, Kryon described a process whereby our residual karma (that which we bring forward from past lives) could be released. It seemed like a good deal: nothing to buy or join and there was no need to go to a spiritualist "specialist" who had the ability to do the release. The whole thing was between spirit and me. I liked that idea having become a bit tired and jaded with having "experts" tell me how to manage my life. The next morning on the way to work, while on a San Diego freeway at rush hour, I asked for this release per Kryon's instructions. I got energetically fried. Waves of energy swept through my whole body from head to toe. It was an entirely unique experience for me somewhat akin to sticking my fingers in an electrical outlet only with benign yet very evident results. This was in 1995 about the time that I got the job as the director of training. I did receive the release or "neutral implant" about four months after requesting it. I was awakened at 1:30 AM with wave after wave after wave of energy coursing through my body. It was similar to the experience I had on the freeway when I requested the release only more intense. This went on for an hour with breaks for me regroup and wonder if I was going crazy. I finally went back to sleep and awoke exhausted the next morning completely drained. That was my experience, and I know others who have had very different "installations," so my conclusion is that it is a personal thing. It did free me up to really think about having my life be different than it had because of no longer needing to have "karmic moments" based on my past lives. Thus began the conscious journey along my spiritual path. We all walk our paths the entirety of our lives, but it is not until we do so consciously that any direction begins to appear. PSI and Landmark taught me that I could change who I was, and although offering tools to do so, I could not use them because of the judgments that I held about my unworthiness and inferiority as a human being. This was the area in which I needed to do work if my life was to truly transform. I jumped on it with a vengeance. I needed to go inside to face my dark side, to illuminate my shadow self with the Light of spirit. I did a lot of things during the next few years: read a lot of books (the more personally valuable ones are found by clicking Readings), attended seminars, had readings, did inner child work, joined a spiritual healing group, went to sacred places (click Travels), meditated, burned a ton of incense, did floats in a sensory deprivation tank, fasted in the desert, practiced tai chi and yoga, and enrolled in a masters program in spiritual psychology at the University of Santa Monica (USM). It was the program at USM that finally enabled me to shed the Light on what I needed to understand about myself in order to be other than what I had been for all of those years yearning for something different. One night after class, I faced my demons and banished them with the support and love of a classmate, Susan, who made it safe for me to finally venture into the dark places inside me. I will be forever grateful to her for her support, love, and understanding. Around this time, Patricia and I parted ways after seven years. I think that we both discovered that, although our paths intersected and ran parallel for a while, it was time to take different directions. Following this epiphany, I expanded a casual interest in shamanism into an intense exploration that I am still pursuing. Some of the work that I did can be found at NeoShamanism. I find that the non-dogmatic and flexible practices of shamanism (I have adopted and adapted native North and South American traditions) are well suited to my own beliefs and findings. The shamanic journey is a wonderful way to access spirit on behalf of others and myself. I do not consider myself a shaman, and I perform shamanic practices. Traditionally the title, shaman, is granted by a community that the shaman serves. I have no such community and do not claim the title. In summarizing my
journey thus far, this is what I have found: 2006 Update: Cindy and I are exploring what are for us brand new avenues of spiritual evolution and have found a lot of material that we did not previously know about. It seems that each time we turn a corner there is something new to learn. Our lastest venture is to study the Seven Rays and how they can be used in emotional healing. Some of what we have learned thus far can be found on this website at Seven Rays. Where all of this is taking us we are not exactly sure and have no expectations around our journey. We do know that we are solidly on the course of service to others; how this plays out eventually holds a lot of interesting possibilities. If you have questions or want to know about some aspect of what I wrote about my life, please email me. |
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Email Ron: Ron@RonMcCray.com
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© Ron McCray 2002 - 2005
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who
started all of this. 
relationship
was as business friends although there was always something very special
about her but I was too thick at the time to figure out what. Anyway,
after virtually no contact for years, she "found" me via the
Internet magazine that I was helping to edit,